MYST POST #1: The Virgin Suicides

              

                Being a fan of Sofia Coppola, and enjoying two of her other movies, Lost in Translation (2003) and The Bling Ring (2013), I figured I ought to watch one of her earliest works, The Virgin Suicides (1999).  As expected, this movie is rather gloomy, but I found it to be an enjoyable watch.  The story focuses on the five Lisbon sisters, Cecilia  (Hanna Hall), Lux (Kirsten Dunst), Bonnie (Chelse Swain), Mary (A.J. Cook), and Therese (Leslie Hayman).  It’s basically a character study of these five girls from the perspective of the boys in the neighborhood.  The youngest girl, Cecilia, commits suicide, leaving a lasting impact on not only her family but on the community itself.  The parents (played by James Woods and Kathleen Turner), two very opposing forces (the father being lackadaisical and the mother being strict), shelter the remaining girls and eventually shut them up in the house.   We see the gradual emotional destruction of the girls as the movie progresses and ends.

               

 So, all in all, not a happy story. And if it had been done wrong it could’ve been incredibly tough to get through.  Coppola, I believe, manages to combat that.  The best part about the film is that it relies heavily on implications.  Many of the emotions of the girls or the family we have to pick up from their actions or their inflection when they speak.  Once Cecilia dies, there are several shots of the boys “seeing” her in their rooms or around town.  Mr. Lisbon believes to have seen her standing in her bedroom, a few feet from the window she jumped from.  This is heavily implying the state of mind of everyone; they all cannot stop thinking about Cecilia.  This alleviates some of the dark and depressing themes that could’ve made the movie tough. 

                 

               The main style of the film is almost an investigation; the boys explain all the evidence they find on the Lisbon girls, there are many “interviews” with various characters.  There were also included many voice-overs from the gossipers talking on the telephone, whispering rumors and secrets to one another while we see the boarded up outside of the house.  This again emphasizes the enigma of the girls; they are nothing but a rumor.  There is never concrete evidence found about them.

                Also to emphasize the pure dreamlike quality the girls posses, there are many shots of the girls framed in sunlight, dancing in fields.  There are many close-ups on Lux’s face, showing her smile or her hair.  The colors are bright and there are lots of camera flares, making them seem superficial, in a way.  This adds greatly into proving that yes, they are an unattainable, incomprehensible image the boys like to idolize, but never fully get to know.  To be honest, these girls and the way they are perceived remind me of the Lady Brett Ashley in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.  Loved for their image and their beauty, but never loved for themselves, and never fully understood.

                One scene that particularly resonated with me was the debutante party after the quadruple suicides of the remaining sisters. The party was themed “asphyxiation,” in bad taste, of course, but it shows the mentality of the boys.  The deaths are on their mind, constantly.  It is all they can think about, even, as they say, now they are all grown.  The party very much emphasizes the theme of death. The voices become tinny.  The lines that we manage to catch are all involving death.  Everything is soaked in a green haze, and many people wear gas masks.  The boys wander around amid a sea of well-dressed men and women, very much looking dead to the world.  The father of the debutante gives a speech about how proud they are of her, and how she has a bright future ahead of her.  A future the Lisbon girls no longer have before them.  One character flings himself into the pool, proclaiming “I’m a teenager, I have problems,” in complete mockery of the sisters.  The haziness and chaos of the scene reflects the inner haze the boys feel.  They spent much time obsessing over the girls, and now they are dead.  While the actual scene of the boys discovering the bodies was very brief and anticlimactic, this party and its visuals help us understand the aftermath of the deaths.  I found this scene to fit the end of the movie very well and it helped me comprehend the full impact of the girls’ deaths.

                I find this film to fit in with Coppola’s style exactly.  Many implications, many shots of character’s faces to understand their emotions.  She seems to like playing with sound, just like the murmured line in the end of Lost In Translation.  There are many quiet lines you have to listen very hard to catch, and there are many voice-overs with small tidbits of information the boys managed to uncover.   Kirsten Dunst, playing the sexually-active sister Lux, far exceeded my expectations.  Knowing her from the Spiderman movies, I was less than impressed to see her on the cast list for this movie.  But I was pleasantly surprised.  She manages to capture Lux’s character very well. 

                Upon discussing this film with my dad, he explained to me that the book, by Jeffrey Eugenides, was much better than its film adaptation.  Feeling curious, I read the book myself.  To be honest, not much was lost between the transition.  All the key elements are there, accurately portrayed on screen.  The actors captured their characters incredibly well, and Sofia Coppola’s approach to an investigative style matches the narration of the book.  To be honest, I’m not sure what my dad was talking about, and I’m a stickler for book to movie adaptations being good.  I will say that somehow the book had a luster to it, an enticement that was lost on the movie.  The book had a spark to it that never really made it on screen.  Yet I still feel the movie is fantastic anyways.

               

                If you like odd, quirky, slightly depressing films, then you’d probably like The Virgin Suicides.  Personally, I really enjoyed the cinematography and the script and the editing.  I would very much recommend this movie.  4.5/5 STARS