"The Virgin Suicides" is simply one of my favourite films. I recently wrote a review on the movie “Dick” which starred Kirsten Dunst who is also in this movie. I thought it would balance things out as far as Kirsten’s acting goes, her performance in this couldn’t be more contrasting. “Dick” was even made in the same year.

This was probably one of the first reviews I ever wrote for ciao, yet it never got posted. Why? Well I don’t think I could particularly write a good review it deserved. I happened to have found this review on an old floppy disk so I read it over and couldn’t believe the rubbish that I actually wrote (not that I’ve improved much) so I thought I would just start from scratch. At the moment I’ve got the worst ear infection! It’s painful and it’s constantly got me in a bad mood, so for that I want to watch a movie that will reflect my mood, something depressing yet thought provoking, that’s where my “The Virgin Suicides” DVD comes in.

The movie is based on the acclaimed novel by Jeffrey Eugenides. A dark yet dreamy tale of adolescence involving love, sex, passion, fear and obsession. I haven’t read the book so I can’t really compare the movie to it. All I now is that Eugenides got his inspiration for this novel after he spoke to a girl who felt so sheltered in her life, she felt the only way out was suicide.

The movie is all about the five beautiful Lisbon sisters living in Michigan in the 1970’s. Therese (17), Mary (16), Bonnie (15), Lux (14) and Cecilia (13) are all wanted yet unattainable due to their strict Catholic parents. The movie is narrated throughout by one of the boys who grew up watching them. The boys were simply fascinated by them. This is the story of the short and tragic lives of the Lisbon sisters.

Cecilia unsuccessfully tries to kill herself by slitting her wrists. There is no apparent reason as to why she wanted to kill herself; her only explanation to her doctor is that he’s “never been a 13 year old girl”. I don’t know how much importance it carries but in my opinion Cecilia seemed like the only sister who was kind, I’m not saying the other sisters were evil or cruel but she seemed the most caring, in one particular scene when a boy with down syndrome comes to the Lisbon’s first and only party, the boys who are guests and the sisters feel the need to make fun of him, Cecilia only watches and doesn’t really want to be apart of it. Walking away from the situation she asks to be excused and jumps out of her window to her death.

After Cecilia’s shocking demise the Lisbon’s begin to shut the world out. The parents, mainly the mother feels the need to be overprotective of her daughters which ultimately leads to her suffocating them. The sisters become somewhat dazed and are only brought back up when Trip Fontaine the school hunk woos Lux. Trip tells Mr Lisbon his intentions for Lux are honourable, who then convinces the very uptight Mrs Lisbon to let the girls go to their homecoming dance. Trip finds four other (extremely lucky) boys to take the girls out and for one night, their lives don’t seem all that bad. After being crowned king and queen of the prom Trip convinces Lux to ditch the prom and go for a walk which later turns into sex on the football pitch.

Lux wakes up the next morning alone on the football pitch. It becomes apparent that after sleeping with her Trip got sick of her. Yet later on we learn the older Trip Fontaine was in love with her, and always will be. We don’t really learn why he left her if he was really in love with her. Lux goes home to a very frightened mother. Because of Lux’s actions the Lisbon sisters are locked away for good, even taken out of school, incarcerated by Mrs. Lisbon. The boys are just fascinated by the girls who are locked away by their mother. But they no longer just want to watch them, they want to save them.

This is my own interpretation of the movie; if you don’t want to know anything more about the plot then I suggest you avoid the following paragraph.

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After watching the movie a few more times I began to feel that Lux was the ringleader of the sisters. You don’t get to see the other sister’s downfall or see any explanation as to why they killed themselves; Lux’s character is the only one who is developed so you get to see why she might do it. At first I felt this was a slight disadvantage, the fact that you don’t get to see why Therese, Mary and Bonnie also killed themselves but I myself believe that Lux was the one who may have pushed them into doing it, not that their sheltered lives were going to improve anyway. Even at the end when the boys come to ‘save’ them, Lux is the last one to kill herself, possibly because she is leaving her sisters to get on with it.

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James Woods gave a brilliant performance and that’s all I can say. When I first heard that he was playing the father in this movie I was a little confused, James Woods? But all I can say is he played the part superbly. Mr Lisbon is a bit of a strange man, but still has a lot of love for his daughters; in the movie it becomes apparent that Mr Lisbon is a bit of a doormat to his wife but Woods successfully brought qualities to the character, which made you feel sympathetic toward him. In particular in one scene after the girls have been locked up in their home, where he begins to talk to plants about photosynthesis.

Kathleen Turner played the part of Mrs. Lisbon excellently. She was bitter, yet for some reason you still felt somewhat sympathetic toward her character. She felt the need to shelter her daughters from reality and I thought Turner brought some very interesting qualities to this slightly disturbed woman. I thought her performance was brilliant.

Kirsten Dunst shined as the “stone fox” Lux Lisbon. Her performance was brilliant and she portrayed Lux as a bit of a contradiction. She was somewhat quiet yet from inside she seemed confident. Lux was a bit of a seductress and the most sexual out of the 5 sisters, she did things the other sisters would never dream of doing. I personally felt that Lux’s character was more about her body language rather than the words she spoke. Lux didn’t speak that often, it was more about what she did, rather than what she said. I thought Kirsten was perfect for this role and showed she can do the more serious stuff just as well as the light-hearted teen movies. In my personal opinion Kirsten Dunst looked her best appearance wise in 1999, you can understand why Lux was so desirable to the male characters in the movie.

Leslie Hayman, A.J Cook, Chelse Swain and Hannah Hall gave exceptional performances as the Lisbon sisters. In particularly I felt Hannah Hall gave a good performance, even though she was only in it for about 20 minutes. I could feel her pain and you could sympathise with her character, she wasn’t just crying out for help. There wasn’t too much emphasis on the other sisters but I still thought they all gave good performances.

Sofia Coppola has in my opinion made a beautiful film. I know a lot of people were sceptical about her directorial debut due to her having a very famous dad (Francis Ford Coppola). But when you watch this film you’ll know that Sofia Coppola put her heart into this movie. Rumours were circulating that several different scripts were being written, but in the end Coppola who wrote the screenplay was chosen to direct the film. I heard somewhere that the other scripts were supposedly more graphic, but Coppola has done well here, she’s made the movie about the girls and not how they die which I think is better for the audience. I think the script was brilliant and I think it is also good that she got to direct the movie also, so you really see the movie as how she wanted it be seen. She has created a sinister yet dreamy affair.

What I really appreciated about the movie is that it really wasn’t about how and why the girls killed themselves, more emphasis was on the girls and the lead up to their untimely deaths. I think this was much better for the audience as it left you thinking, and also gave way for the audience to have their own personal theories. The movie just constantly has you engaged which just makes you create your own opinions.

The camera movements were something that I quite liked about the movie because it really suited the mood of the story. The atmosphere created is very contradictive that you can sense a dreamy atmosphere yet you know there will be a tragic end to this tale. Coppola has created a very unusual atmosphere but it goes only too well with the story. I don’t know how she’s done it but Coppola has managed to create such an atmosphere in the movie that it has daydream qualities, which makes it a beautiful film yet at the same time there’s something dark and disturbing incorporated into the movie at the same time. The contradictive qualities bought into the movie by Coppola make it sensual and beautiful yet tragic, dark and disturbing.

I wasn’t going to write about the soundtrack in this opinion because it’s one of my favourite CD’s ever, and I thought I would write a separate review on it, but I thought I would talk about it because it really does help show the tone of the movie. The whole soundtrack is produced by Air, and is mostly just music. In my opinion it’s extremely haunting yet has a very chilled out vibe to it, which describes the tone of the movie only too well. The soundtrack is mainly piano based with the signature Air sound of techno. Some of the highlights to the soundtrack are the tracks “Playground love”, “Cemetery Party”, “Afternoon Sister” and “High school lover” which to me are dark and creepy yet I thoroughly enjoy listening to them. The music to this movie is extremely important because it sets the scene and I feel that Air have produced an exceptionally good soundtrack for the movie. The music just gels so well with the tone of the movie, it’s exactly how you would imagine it to be. I would recommend this soundtrack to fans of Air, and people who enjoy chill out music; it might not be ideal chill out music because of its dark, creepy and haunting sound but it really is worth listening to in my opinion.

This movie is dark yet thought provoking, I thoroughly recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys a good movie, simple as that. Just because the majority of the cast is made up of teenagers don’t expect it to be a teen movie. This really is a good movie that anyone can enjoy.

A lot of people have their own interpretations of this film. There are several different ideas brought forward, but there is no wrong or right answer. Why exactly did the Lisbon sisters feel the only way out was death? Why exactly did they kill themselves? I guess that’s left for you to decide. But I must say this film will make you think for a long time after you’ve seen it.

“So much has been said about the girls over the years. But we have never found an answer. In the end, it didn't matter how old they were, or that they were girls...only that we had loved them. And they did not hear us calling, still did not hear us calling from out of those rooms...where they went to be alone for all time. And where we will never find the pieces to put them back together.” - Narrator

CAST~~

James Woods - Mr. Lisbon
Kathleen Turner - Mrs. Lisbon
Kirsten Dunst - Lux Lisbon
A.J. Cook - Mary Lisbon
Hanna Hall - Cecilia Lisbon
Leslie Hayman - Therese Lisbon
Chelse Swain - Bonnie Lisbon
Josh Hartnett - Trip Fontaine
Jonathan Tucker - Tim Weiner
Noah Shebib - Parkie Denton
Robert Schwartzman - Paul Baldino
Lee Kagan - David Barker
Anthony DeSimone - Chase Buell
Danny DeVito - Dr. Horniker
Scott Glenn - Father Moody
Giovanni Ribisi - Narrator

DIRECTOR~~

Sofia Coppola

CERTIFICATE~~

15

RUNTIME~~

97 min

“The Virgin Suicides” is available to buy at www.play247.com priced at £12.99

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