Sofia Coppola’s stunningly poetic directorial debut has lost none of its haunting charm or ethereal allure since its Cannes debut. It’s confident, compelling and beautifully styled with an exquisite eye for detail, an excellent cast and an awesome soundtrack featuring the perfect mixtape of ‘70s rock and an impeccable score by the French band Air. Plus, Kirsten Dunst and Josh Hartnett! The story details the five Lisbon sisters, luminous & bewitching teens isolated by overprotective parents (James Woods & Kathleen Turner, both great). The girls move like fleeting visions against their Midwest landscape, eternally unattainable and impossible to forget for the neighborhood boys that narrate the tale. The Virgin Suicides remains an assured showcase for Coppola, a poignant and evocative elegy to forgotten youth and vanished innocence, a captivating vision of adolescence and suburban malaise. But it’s also darkly humorous and profoundly affecting, while capturing with pinpoint accuracy both an era and an age.
“A highly affecting film unafraid to exact an emotional toll.” – Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times
“[Sofia Coppola] has the courage to play it in a minor key. She doesn’t hammer home ideas and interpretations. She is content with the air of mystery and loss that hangs in the air like bitter poignancy.” – Roger Ebert
“More than most recent movies about suburban adolescence, The Virgin Suicides catches both the triviality and the grandeur of youth, its prosaic details and its mythopoetic flights.” – A.O. Scott, The New York Times
Kim Morgan writes about The Virgin Suicides on the New Beverly blog.
