The Virgin Suicides
**1/2
Rated on a 4-star
scale
Screening venue: Odeon (Liverpool City Centre)
Released in the UK by Pathé on May 19, 2000; certificate 15; 97 minutes;
country of origin USA; aspect ratio 1.85:1
Directed by Sofia Coppola; produced by
Francis Ford Coppola, Julie Costanzo, Chris Hanley,
Dan Halsted.
Written by Sofia Coppola; based on the novel by Jeffrey
Eugenides.
Photographed by Edward Lachman; edited by James Lyons, Melissa
Kent.
CAST.....
James Woods..... Ronald A. Lisbon
Kathleen Turner..... Mrs. Lisbon
Kirsten Dunst..... Lux Lisbon
Josh Hartnett..... Trip Fontaine
A.J. Cook..... Mary Lisbon
Hanna Hall..... Cecilia Lisbon
Leslie Hayman..... Therese Lisbon
Chelse Swain..... Bonnie Lisbon
Anthony DeSimmone..... Chase Buell
Lee Kagan..... David Barker
Robert Schwartzman..... Paul Baldino
Noah Shebib..... Parkie Denton
As I walked out of "The Virgin
Suicides", confused, and depressed about my confusion, a fellow member
of the audience, whose girlfriend had walked ahead to the bathroom, struck
up a conversation with me.
"A bit strange, that, wasn't
it?" he began.
"I didn't get it," I replied.
"Don't think it went down well. Not sure what it was
about."
"No, me neither. I've read the book..."
"Was that a lot different?"
"Not exactly, but... it was more metaphorical... this,
I just didn't get it."
And I really didn't. I was glad to see that my
view was shared; I'd considered that maybe my knowledge of the source material
was distracting me, but perhaps that wasn't the problem at all. "The Virgin
Suicides" is haunting in its performances, and engaging in its parts, but
is also unbelievably bewildering, and not in the way it intends to
be.
The setting is suburban America, 1975. Cecilia
Lisbon (Hanna Hall), a 13-year old daughter of a boring maths teacher (James
Woods) and a strict homemaker (Kathleen Turner), kills herself by jumping
from her bedroom window. There are four other siblings in the household:
14-year old Lux (Kirsten Dunst), 15-year old Bonnie (Chelse Swain), 16-year
old Mary (A.J. Cook) and 17-year old Therese (Leslie Hayman).
The neighbourhood lads are fascinated by these
beautiful creatures, and a grown-up version of one of them narrates the movie,
which depicts the year following Cecilia's death. The boys try to gauge the
girls' emotions, mix with them, judge what's going on in their household.
And when the event suggested by the title happens, it is they who discover
the corpses.
As a novel by Jeffrey Eugenides, "The Virgin Suicides"
was about men who had not been able to come to terms with growing up. The
Lisbon sisters were simply emblems of an adolescent male illusion of perfection,
and in wondering why they had ended their lives, the flustered, elegiac narrator
was really trying to figure out what happened to childhood
innocence.
At times, Sofia Coppola's film adaptation seems
to be trying to recapture that sense of confusion, mystery and loss. The
voice-over narration, beautifully delivered by Giovanni Ribisi, speaks of
"having pieces of the puzzle, but not being able to put them together" and
"arguing about it still". But the movie contradicts this by unfolding like
a straight drama, and seeing the girls too clearly as real people. It spends
more time in the Lisbon household than it does with the boys, even though
it wants to keep the Lisbon girls a mystery, and see things from the boys'
point of view.
I can't quite give the movie a negative review,
because I do concur with the critical consensus that Coppola has made an
impressive directorial debut. Her most famous previous work was as an actress
in "The Godfather, Part III", where she wasn't terribly good. "The Virgin
Suicides" reveals her control over other performers, and strong ability to
evoke a sense of time and place. I just don't think it works as an enigmatic
mood piece. It wants to wonder about events, and yet show them onscreen as
well. What's going on?
COPYRIGHT© 2000 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
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