The Virgin Suicides (1999)

Sofia Coppola's first film may in fact be her best, not that many of her other films aren't really good, even great, but the style comes out fully formed in this first one and subsequent films of hers have been variations on the same theme, namely stylized melancholy with a strong soundtrack. Based on the 1993 debut novel of the same name by the later Pulitzer Prize winner Jeffrey Eugenides, 'The Virgin Suicides' tells that story of 5 suburban Michigan sisters in 1974 and how over the course of around eights months, each of them commits suicide. So obviously this isn't a light hearted film, it's beautifully sad, and not an endorsement of their actions, which I kind of took it to be when I first heard of it 20 years ago, a glamorizing.

The death of the youngest girl, 13 year old Cecilia, well that probably couldn't have been stopped, she probably couldn't have been helped she was quite disturbed, but the others, well those largely grew out of the ways principally the mother (Kathleen Turner) responded to the first death. Yet neither she nor the father (James Woods, you forgot how good of an actor he is) were bad people, and the girls, though Lux (Kirstin Dunst) was particularly prone to be wild, weren't bad girls. The mystery of why the tragedy happened is at the heart of the film and is never really answered, because how could a mystery of this sort be answered.

The film is presented as the reminiscence of local boys from the neighborhood, who even 25 years later continue to be obsessively puzzled about how those beautiful neighbors came to their ultimate fate. I was supper impressed with 'The Virgin Suicides' I know and like Ms. Coppola's work but this far exceeded my expectations, quite a powerful movie. Not that stylized really for the most of it, though the coda at the end really is and it took me awhile to decide that that last sequence really works. Highly recommended, to the right audience. ****