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Making its debut at Cannes and playing the film festival circuit, The Virgin Suicides was picked up by the now defunct Paramount Classics (aka Paramount Vantage), a distributor that never seemed to get box office returns. The film was their fifth release and first minor success. Budgeted at a surprisingly low $6 million given the finished and expansive look to the film, it wound up with a so-so $4.9 million ($7.2 million adjusted to 2010 dollars) and about the same in foreign grosses. With the off-putting title, the film was mismarketed as a Heathers-esque adult drama while it is more in tune with the sexual and religious awakening of Carrie but without the supernatural powers and no pigs harmed in the making. Strangely released at the end of April and starting out in 18 theaters with a fairly high venue average, by the time it slowly reached 275 theaters, it was unsuccessful at maintaining that momentum.

Poetically told, The Virgin Suicides, tricks the audience at the end by having us realize that we haven’t really learnt any more then what we started with. This type of story-telling is not for everyone, but the end result is still haunting and maybe this is what Coppola wanted to accomplish. Women are a haunting creatures – shot by the female eye, the wondrous shots of the sun through leaves (a trademark of Coppola) and other sun-kissed shots (even the poster for the film is of a sun-blurred Dunst) add a bit of femininity to the male narration. Men are not meant to understand women and their doings and being told from a male perspective, that is exactly what happens. But told with snappy dark humor, creativity, tender warmth and confusion, it is the closest that any of us guys might ever get to be in their shoes.

1/2 stars

Verdict: With Us

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