From Amazon.com
Previously criticized for her marginal acting skills, Sofia Coppola made her directorial debut with
The Virgin Suicides and silenced her detractors. No amount of coaching from her director father (Francis Coppola) or husband (Spike Jonze) could have guaranteed a film this assured, and in adapting Jeffrey Eugenides's novel, Coppola demonstrates the sensitivity and emotional depth that this material demands. Surely the pain of youth and public criticism found its way into her directorial voice; in the story of four sisters who self-destruct under the steady erosion of their youthful ideals, one can clearly sense Coppola's intimate connection to the inner lives of her characters.
Played in a delicate minor key, the film is heartbreaking, mysterious, and soulfully funny, set in a Michigan suburb of the mid-1970s but timeless and universal to anyone who's been a teenager. The four surviving Lisbon sisters lost a sibling to suicide, and as its title suggests, the film will chart their mutual course to oblivion under the vigilance of repressive parents (Kathleen Turner and James Woods, perfectly cast). But The Virgin Suicides is more concerned with life in that precious interlude of adolescence, when the Lisbon girls are worshipped by the neighborhood boys, their notion of perfection epitomized by Lux (Kirsten Dunst) and her storybook love for high-school stud Trip (Josh Hartnett). Unfolding at the cusp of innocence and sexual awakening, and recalled as a memory, The Virgin Suicides is, ultimately, about the preservation of the Lisbon sisters by their own deaths--suspended in time, polished to perfection, and forever untainted by adulthood. --Jeff Shannon
Review
The Virgin Suicides paints an emotionally harrowing portrait of adolescence. Simultaneously nostalgic and foreboding, Coppola finds just the right tone to deliver a warning about the way girls grow up in society, while still having enough grace to show us there may be hope. The cinematography and acting reinforce the theme of fantasy colliding with reality. Ed Lachman utilizes a dreamy, nostalgic look which allows the tragedy of the film to hit the audience even harder. Kirsten Dunst gives a stunningly mature performance. She manages to simultaneously play both the fantasy dream girl and the pained reality that make up the conflicting aspects of Lux's personality. Giovanni Ribisi narrates the film with a voice that is simultaneously resigned and filled with wonder. It is the voice of maturity looking back on youth. He is a representation of the adult voice of all the boys in the neighborhood who spent their days fantasizing about Lux and her sisters. At the end of the film, he tells the audience that they now realize they knew nothing at all about the Lisbon girls. This understanding may be the first step. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide
