# Virgin Suicides, The (1999)

### reviewed by
Eugene Novikov

    The Virgin Suicides (2000)
    Reviewed by Eugene Novikov
    http://www.ultimate-movie.com/
    Member: Online Film Critics Society

Starring Kirsten Dunst, James Woods, Kathleen Turner, Josh Hartnett, Hanna Hall, Chelse Swain, A.J. Cook, Leslie Hayman and the voice of Giovanni Ribisi. Directed by Sofia Coppola. Rated R.

The Lisbon sisters enchanted the boys in the neighborhood. They toyed with them, taunted them, tempted them and then just as the boys thought that they were going to score, the girls committed suicide. Was this all a cruel game they played, a last hurrah against the culture that restricted them? Or was it a subconscious, desperate cry for help and finally a release from a life they hated? Such is the difficult subject matter of Sophia Coppola's powerful, confident directing debut entitled The Virgin Suicides, a visually stunning, emotionally wrenching trip through the dark side of 70's suburbia.

There were five of them: Lux (Kirsten Dunst), Cecilia (Hanna Hall), Bonnie (Chelse Swain), Mary (A.J. Cook), Therese (Leslie Hayman). Cecilia, the youngest, was the first to go. She tried to kill herself by slitting her wrists in a bathtub; when that didn't work, she jumped out of a window and landed directly on a spiked fence. Why she did what she did is ambiguous. The mother (Kathleen Turner), a devoutly Catholic woman who was paranoidly protective as it was, becomes even more cautious. The dad (James Woods), a calm, reserved schoolteacher seems to care less. In any event, the rest of the girls' lives are never the same again.

Meanwhile, the boys gather at a house across the street and spy on the Lisbon sisters through a telescope. They begin a collection of Lisbon souvenirs -- diaries, clothes, hairpins, etc. When, on prom night, Lux sleeps with the school rebel Trip Fontaine (Josh Hartnett) on the football field, mommy goes mad and shuts the girls off from the world completely. After hearing a church sermon, she makes Lux burn her rock records. The sisters' only contact with other people is through cryptic messages they and the boys send to each other until one night they finally build up the courage to end it all.

The Virgin Suicides brings a new meaning to the age-old complaint "Parents just don't understand." This is the '70's, after all -- the "ME" decade -- where, thanks to the "hippie" counterculture, teens began to be looked upon as something resembling the spawn of Satan. It's understandable, then, why Mrs. Lisbon got the idea that the best way to protect her daughters from the evils of the other teenagers was to shut them off completely. This film has been attacked by the Catholic League, who charge that the girls commit suicide because they couldn't stand their Catholic upbringing. These are misguided complaints -- Catholicism had little to do with it.

The story is told from the point of view of the boys by a sort of collective narrator (Giovanni Ribisi, who never actually appears). We see much of the events from the outside looking in. Watching the film is a little bit like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. We're told very little outright -- the boys concede that they could not even begin to understand the complexity of the Lisbon sisters -- and are expected to figure it out on our own. The film's ending, surprising despite its inevitability, leaves a lot of room for debate.

Sofia Coppola, never quite able to hit it big as an actress despite the prominence of her director father Francis Ford Coppola, shows great promise behind the camera. She has a surprising visual flair: the repeating shot of Lux's sad face translucently superimposed over a picturesque grass field with beautiful sunny skies above is hypnotic and strangely ominous. Her sparing use of camera tricks like split- screen and slow motion turn out to have a haunting effect and the film's bleak, cold color palette gives it an appropriately unrealistic, isolated, out-of-touch look, perhaps mimicking the girls' feelings.

The Virgin Suicides is a spellbinding tale of pubescent discovery, parental indifference the fundamental unfairness of the 1970's and the power that childhood memories can hold. It's rich, poignant, rewarding and ultimately unforgettable.

    Grade: A

    ©2000 Eugene Novikov

    Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
    Before you buy.

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