The deaths we experience while in high school seem to affect us more than at any other time in our lives. When I was sixteen, a friend of mine was murdered, along with four other family members, by another family member, in a high-profile murder case. Experiencing something like that changes you forever. Sometimes it's just an event that you think about every now and then, such as on your fortieth birthday, when you marvel that your dead friend would also be forty now.

Sofia Coppola, best known for her ill-fated portrayal of the ill-fated Mary Corleone in the ghastly Godfather Part III and less so for being Mrs. Spike Jonze, makes an auspicious directorial debut in her lyrical, dreamy adaptation of Jeffrey Euginides' novel THE VIRGIN SUICIDES.

The girls of the title are Bonnie (Chelse Swain), Mary (A.J. Cook), Therese (Leslie Hayman), Lux (Kirsten Dunst), and Cecelia (Hanna Hall) Lisbon, the stunning, golden-tressed daughters of dorky math teacher Mr. Lisbon (James Woods) and his uptight, hand-wringing, obviously sexually repressed, devout Catholic wife (Kathleen Turner). The Lisbon girls are the obsession objects of a group of neighborhood boys, led by brainy Tim Weiner (Jonathan Tucker), whose adult reminiscences narrate the film. Beautiful, ethereal, and ultimately unattainable due to their insular existence within the bosom of their overly strict family, they come to embody, in the minds of these adolescent males, everything that is mysterious and unfathomable about the "species" known as women.

That these beauteous creatures are doomed is a foregone conclusion before we even walk into the theatre; the only question is why? And how? Improbably, the youngest, Cecelia, is the first to go, after a previous suicide attempt is missed as the cry for help that it is. Cecelia's suicide is a catalyst for the girls to attempt to live a more "normal" life, climaxed by a mass date to a Homecoming dance, led by the sexually aggressive Lux and her dreamboat date, the hilariously named Trip Fontaine (Josh Hartnett). The inevitable backlash by the Lisbon parents when their curfew goes awry has tragic consequences that affect the group of memorabilia-collecting borderline peeping toms, an effect which we find out has permeated -- and poisoned -- their lives ever since.

My high school friend had red hair, not blonde, but she was the living embodiment of Lux Lisbon -- tall, sexually curious, possessed of the kind of magnetism that we mere mortals in our ponchos and stringy hair can only dream of. And in legend, these otherworldly creatures must be by definition doomed. It could be argued that in making the Lisbon girls so utterly, perfectly beautiful, Coppola paints them as the sort of Barbie doll fantasy figures that have always fueled male fantasies, instead of as living, breathing people. Coppola shows us the Lisbon girls the way a young teenaged boy must have seen them in 1975; with all the awe, wonder, and obsession that only the young and curious can convey. And if this means that the girls don't seem quite real, well so be it.

THE VIRGIN SUICIDES is a sort of companion piece to last year's AMERICAN BEAUTY in that it digs under the attractive, normal-appearing surface of affluent suburbia to show the dysfunction within. Shot in a dreamy fashion, full of sun-dappled time-lapse shots, the film sometimes shows a strong David Lynch influence, particularly in its fantasy sequences (in which the girls are portrayed as gamboling sprites) and in its peculiar touches of whimsy (such as an insert showing that Lux has written the name of her current heartthrob on her underwear). The girls lie artfully draped around their room stroking each other hair, reminiscent of the languid New Orleans prostitutes in Louis Malle's PRETTY BABY. Indeed, the artistry of the film often obscures the story, which is not really a liability, since the film's outcome is a foregone conclusion.

Kathleen Turner deserves kudos for having the courage to portray the frumpy, sexually repressed Mrs. Lisbon seemingly without makeup and without losing the infamous weight she has said she always gains between films. Turner perfectly conveys the internal conflict of a mother turn between what she believes to be genuine love for her daughters, and her true belief that sheltering them entirely from a society still emerging from a major societal upheaval is somehow the right thing to do. James Woods, finally cast in a role that isn't a sleazebag, is deftly comical as the dorky math teacher, who seems a bit less enslaved by religion, and who understands why it's important to allow his daughter to accept an invitation to a dance; even if the condition is that the young man in question finds dates for the other girls as well.

The actresses who portray the girls heartbreakingly capture the sense of doom mixed with hope that imbues these characters. Kirsten Dunst, as Lux, has the flashiest role, even if, at eighteen, she seems a bit too old to be the fourteen-year-old Lux. Dunst is clearly a young lady fascinated with the development of her own sexual allure, and as with most teenagers, it comes across as a bit mannered, even if authentic. Hanna Hall, as the earliest casualty, Cecelia, is now the THIRD generation of blonde, hooded-eyed beauties (the first two being Uma Thurman and Sarah Polley), as if there is a factory somewhere cranking these girls out. But her performance eerily conveys the unfathomable depths of teenaged depression.

Relative newcomer Josh Hartnett (THE FACULTY) shows tremendous star potential as the studly Trip Fontaine. With a perfectly floppy 1970's David Cassidy haircut, low-slung trousers, and a carefully cultivated Jim Morrison swagger to offset an aura of goofiness, he perfectly embodies the kind of guy for whom high school was the pinnacle of life. From the moment Trip hilariously appears on the scene as decoration on a hot red car, to the strains of Heart's Magic Man, Hartnett adds much-needed heat and a light comic touch to the dour proceedings. An interesting side note to this character is the brief appearance of Michael Paré as the adult Trip, now residing in what is clearly a drug rehabilitation center. Paré is hardly an A-list actor, but in just one moment, when his face lights up as he remembers his one night with Lux Lisbon, he is every adult who finds himself staring down a future of disappointment, his best years behind him.

THE VIRGIN SUICIDES is a film of mood and feeling, rather than plot, and Coppola shows a deft hand at conveying the reality that the teenage years are a time of yearning and longing -- for something, even if we don't always know what. She understands that teenaged sex is about the tension, not the consummation, and focuses on furtive looks, sighs, a brief hand touch, a quick kiss in a car, rather than in endless heavy breathing. I doubt a male director would have directed the sexuality in this fashion. A moody, new-agey score by Air that is reminiscent of Angelo Badalamenti's TWIN PEAKS music underscores the "Lynchian" aspects of the film. A sequence in which the neighborhood boys from whose point of view the story is told reach out to the girls by playing snippets from songs such as Todd Rundgren's Hello, it's Me, and Gilbert O'Sullivan's Alone Again, Naturally is one of the most interesting, if a touch overlong, moments in the film, and perfectly captures the way teenagers use music to express their feelings.

If THE VIRGIN SUICIDES is at all retrograde, it's in its insistence on portraying the golden-tressed Lisbon girls, and by extension, teenaged girls in general, as ciphers seen only through the eyes of boys. Yet within the context of this story, the girls are not intended to be full-blooded characters, but symbols; and as such, they succeed admirably. As long as girls don't decide that having a group of boys holding up cigarette lighters outside their home after their deaths, as if they were an estrogenic Grateful Dead after a concert, is somehow better than living.

-- Jill Cozzi

Review text copyright © 2000 Jill Cozzi and Cozzi fan Tutti, © 2003 Mixed Reviews. All rights reserved. Reproduction of text in whole or in part in any form or in any medium without express written permission of Mixed Reviews or the author is prohibited.

Back To Top | Home | Archive | E-Mail Harvest