The Virgin Suicides: A DVD Review

Beautiful Blondes: Therese (Leslie Hayman), Lux (Kirsten Dunst), Mary (A.J. Cook), and Bonnie (Chelse Swain) Lisbon are the doomed title characters of The Virgin Suicides.

For lack of something better to post right now, below is one of my better DVD reviews, which was first published in June 2003 in the Philippine Graphic. I hope you like it.

TEENS IN TROUBLE TURN TRAGIC IN THIS TERRIFIC FILM

Director: Sofia Coppola. Screenwriter: Sofia Coppola, based upon the novel by Jeffrey Eugenides. Starring: James Woods, Kathleen Turner, Kirsten Dunst, Josh Hartnett, A.J. Cook, Leslie Hayman, Chelse Swain, Hanna Hall, Michael Paré, Scott Glenn, Danny DeVito.

I have always believed that one of the challenges a filmmaker faces when making a period film is that it’s quite easy to capture the look of a certain time, but not the feel of it. And that capture should be complete and faultless. This is particularly true if a film takes place in 1970s America. The unbelievable clothes, the outrageous hairstyles, the amazing music—they’re easy to put on the screen. But not the trauma the decade had inflicted on that country. Watergate, the Vietnam War, the unprecedented permissiveness—these, and everything else in between, have knocked everyone off-balance and left them in a lingering daze. That’s hard to put on film.

Only a handful of films, in my mind, have not only met that challenge, but also met it very well. There’s Boogie Nights, Paul Thomas Anderson’s masterful opus on the porn industry at its peak, which nails the no-holds-barred excess and frenzy of the period. In contrast, Ang Lee’s cool and graceful suburban drama, The Ice Storm captures the startling sexual openness and moral confusion people were dealing with then. As for Almost Famous, Cameron Crowe’s bittersweet, semi-autobiographical comedy about a teenage Rolling Stone reporter’s coming of age while on a special assignment, it shows how fast, free-wheeling, and fun life was at that time.

And there’s the latest addition to that list: Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides.

This impressive feature, as narrated by actor Giovanni Ribisi, has two stories to tell. One focuses on an invisible group of men who grew up in a middle-class Michigan suburb in the 1970s, who recall an incident in their youth that has haunted them ever since, that they cannot help but talk about it every time they’re together. All throughout the film they try to piece whatever available information they have and figure out why it happened. But answers elude them.

The other centers on the Lisbon family—Mr. Lisbon (James Woods), a high-school math teacher; his very religious and overprotective wife (Kathleen Turner), a homemaker; and their attractive daughters (Leslie Hayman, A.J. Cook, Chelse Swain, Kirsten Dunst, Hanna Hall)—and how the isolating and stifling homelife the parents imposed on their girls leads to unimaginable tragedy, a tragedy that haunts the boys in their neighborhood for years to come.

Like its doomed heroines, The Virgin Suicides has an uncommon beauty that, at times, is unnerving and unreal to watch. Edward Lachman’s luminous cinematography, Jasna Stefanovich’s authentic production design and Nancy Steiner’s clean, crisp costumes contribute a lot in creating that lingering loveliness in which memory is filtered and comes out like a beautiful dream. And if it’s like a dream, then the entrancing musical score by the French electronica duo Air bolsters and enhances it. That’s not all: the film uses a good number of 1970s songs to outstanding effect. Truly, music plays a very important role in the movie, in more ways than one.

But they’re not the movie’s only highlights. There are the performances, of course—particularly from the principals. Woods is usually an intense and magnetic actor, and his previous performances reflect this; but his role as The Virgin Suicides’ dork of a dad apparently offers a refreshing change-of-pace for him, and as a result turns in an exceptionally understated performance. The same with Turner, and what’s awesome about her turn as a well-meaning meanie of a mother is that she makes you understand, makes you sympathize with her. These are complicated human beings, and Woods and Turner breathe life into them quite beautifully.

As for Dunst, who plays the flirtatious Lux Lisbon, she invests her performance with the weight and playfulness it needs, and persuades us to understand that her being a flirt is a form of rebellion. And Josh Hartnett, who has since gone to greater things with Pearl Harbor and Black Hawk Down, projects pure teen virility as Trip Fontaine, Lux’s studly suitor.

But the film belongs to the filmmaker herself. Better known as Francis Ford Coppola’s (The Godfather films, Apocalypse Now) daughter and Spike Jonze’s (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation) wife, Sofia Coppola finally steps out of their great shadows and comes into her own with this feature, her directorial debut in fact. And believe me, she holds great promise. There’s something eerie, elegiac, and elusive about The Virgin Suicides, much like the Lisbon girls; and Coppola superbly shrouds it with a strong sense of something unsettling underneath the surface. No doubt this is a mood-heavy movie, and Coppola clearly has tight control of her material (in this case, Jeffrey Eugenides’s novel of the same title). The film works because of her.

On the other hand, it doesn’t in a way. For all the craftsmanship that went into it, The Virgin Suicides is ultimately unsatisfying. This is a fatal flaw in most, if not all films; but I would like to think this is not necessarily the case with this particular picture. Maybe the movie reflects the frustration the neighborhood boys-turned-men feel over their failure to unlock the mystery surrounding the girls’ fate, to understand its roots. Or maybe the film is trying to point out that such an exercise is futile, that this futility will haunt them for a long time.

In any case, The Virgin Suicides’ DVD features partially eases that dissatisfaction. There’s the intriguing theatrical trailer, to begin with; and a handsome gallery of mostly spontaneous behind-the-scenes photos. The disc also contains an interesting music video by Air, titled “Playground Love” (one may never look at bubblegums the same way again); and the behind-the-scenes featurette shows how the film, in a real sense, is very much a family affair.

What a difference a decade makes: When The Godfather Part III was released back in 1990, many major critics had savaged Sofia’s performance (as Michael Corleone’s daughter) in it, suggesting that she was partly to blame why the film had failed to measure up to the brilliance of its predecessors. Ten years later, with The Virgin Suicides, she proved to those critics that she has a future in films (albeit behind the camera). And what a bright future it is. (Copyright © 2003 by A.I.D.)

Footnote: A year after this review came out, Sofia Coppola released her sophomore feature, Lost in Translation. As every cinemaphile know, it won several awards, including the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for the writer-director. This made her the fourth Coppola to win an Oscar, after her father Francis Ford (Best Original Screenplay for Patton in 1970, Best Adapted Screenplay for The Godfather in 1972 and Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay for The Godfather Part II in 1974), grandfather Carmine (Best Original Score for The Godfather Part II) and cousin Nicolas Cage (Best Actor for Leaving Las Vegas in 1995).