Are You With Us?: The Virgin Suicides
By Shalimar Sahota
August 12, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Starring – James Woods (Mr 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), Jonathan Tucker (Tim Weiner), Anthony DeSimone (Chase Buell), Giovanni Ribisi (Narrator)
Length – 93 minutes
Cert – 15 / R
Sofia Coppola, daughter of legendary director Francis Ford Coppola, didn't really wish to pursue an acting career, which might explain The Godfather: Part III. So she grew up and grew some balls in the process when it came to writing and directing an adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides' novel The Virgin Suicides.
Set in Michigan during the 1970s, the film narrates the story of four boys, led by Tim (Tucker) and the reason for their permanent hard-ons - their neighbors, the five Lisbon sisters. Cecilia (Hall) is the quiet one and also the youngest at 13; Lux (Dunst) is the one that gets all the guys; Bonnie (Swain) is the clever one; Mary (Cook) is the helpful one and Therese (Hayman), the oldest at 17, is the motivated one. Their parents, Mr. Lisbon (Woods) and Mrs. Lisbon (Turner), are so repressively religious that the boys find it difficult to even talk to the girls. Everything changes after one of the girls commits suicide.
With its teen suicide storyline and dashes of black comedy, you may end up expecting The Virgin Suicides to be Heathers II: Croquet With A Chainsaw. However, the experience is more akin to having evidence being laid out in front of you; only there's no crime to solve, just people to decipher. Outlandishly mysterious, the film is incredibly haunting, made even more so with Air's musical score. Their track "Playground Love" plays every so often, evoking a laid back, melancholy feel.
Coppola was blessed with a great cast, whose performances are spot on. James Woods amazingly plays things straight, trying to appear as normal as possible, while Kathleen Turner comes across as a more mild Serial Mom, enforcing rules and throwing the most awkward party. Dunst as Lux pulls off the seductive yet bored look, sending guys wild with lust, and it's likely that many men watching must have felt the same way (Dunst was only 16-years-old during filming... you dirty old man). Lux doesn't actually have to do anything to lure them in; they're drawn to her like Catholic priests to nurseries, even sharing their brief encounters ("smell my fingers, man"). Hall as Cecilia shows witty intelligence and ultimately sets the tone for the film with her opening line. Her lack of screen time is made up via the lasting impact she leaves. Also, special mention goes to Coppola's decision to introduce Josh Hartnett's Trip Fontaine to Heart's Magic Man.
Apart from tiny nuances, there's little to distinguish the rest of the sisters from each other, and similarly it's the same with the neighborhood boys. They're just this mass of hormones. Likewise, we don't know which of the boys is narrating, but since there's little that separates them it's quite likely that they all share the same voice.
Anything to do with the Lisbon sisters becomes a group activity for the boys. "Collecting everything we could of theirs, the Lisbon girls wouldn't leave our minds." Given how much is thrown out, the boys amass enough of their belongings to start a Lisbon Sisters Museum, going through them as if solving a Rubik's cube. They obtain Cecilia's diary and read it together, like it's a revelation to them about what it must be like being a teenage girl. They even watch Lux having sex on the roof of her house (going so far as to ready popcorn for the next Lux event). Essentially they're stuck watching and reading the fantasy, imagining themselves on far away trips with the girls, since they're unable to spend time with the real thing. But part of that comes down to the girls being confined, rarely getting the chance to be who they want to be.
The film finds many ways to say that the male of the species will never understand teenage girls. Yet, the Lisbon sisters seem to have men sussed out pretty easily, toying with them (and to be incredibly biased, most of them aren't that hard to work out). It helps explain the final act, reinforcing how the boys are so preoccupied in their own fantasies of the Lisbon sisters that they fail to realise that the girls are slowly fading away in front of them. They knew so much about them, but ultimately didn't really know who they were at all. Amid the tension, Coppola adapts from the book a shared "knowledge" that the boys will soon drive the girls out of the neighborhood. On film, the scene becomes cruel situational irony upon the audience.
When released, some critics didn't approve the lack of answers; that it was strange and lacked any distinct point. Even while watching, I had to ask myself, "What the hell is this film about, if anything at all?" It was a while after those credits rolled when the realization came that it may not explain the great big why, but then that's EXACTLY the point. The Virgin Suicides is not based on a true story, but one could believe that the events in this film happened. If we read about it in a newspaper most of us would rarely think twice about it and move on with our lives. The film takes us so deep into the Lisbon family that all of a sudden we want answers to questions we would never have cared to think about, as the viewer is made to feel just like the neighborhood boys.
Playing the major festivals (premiering at Cannes), the film garnered praise from critics. It opened in the US in April 2000, but on limited release (probably down to keeping the word "suicide" in the title, which is never a good sign). The low box office returns still resulted in a tiny profit against its $6 million budget. Coppola went on to write and direct the seminal Lost in Translation (bagging an Oscar for Best Screenplay) and worked with Dunst once again for Marie Antoinette.
The Virgin Suicides is a bittersweet pill to swallow and won't be for everyone. But for people who allow it to transcend from the screen to their inner emotions, it might even make them consider the possibility that maybe they know (or knew) someone like the Lisbon sisters. How will they feel then?