Stars: Kathleen Turner, James Woods, Kirsten Dunst, Danny De Vito, Leslie Hayman, Hanna R. Hall, Chelse Swain, Josh Hartnett, Scott Glenn, Michael Pare, A.J. Cook, Jonathan Tucker, Michelle Duquet, Anthony DeSimone

Director: Sofia Coppola

Summary: Set in the 1970's in Midwestern America, this is the story of the lives of five sisters as seen through the eyes of a group of boys who are obsessed with them.

Based on the 1993 novel by Jeffrey Eugenides, THE VIRGIN SUICIDES tells the dreamlike tale of the Lisbons, a family living in a sheltered 1970s suburbia. When Cecilia (Hannah Hall), the youngest of the five teenage Lisbon daughters, inexplicably commits suicide, the rest of the family--Mr. Lisbon (James Woods), an awkward high school math teacher; Mrs. Lisbon (Kathleen Turner), a stern, humorless housewife; and the four remaining sisters: Lux (Kirsten Dunst), Bonnie (Chelse Swain), Mary (A.J. Cook), and Therese (Leslie Hayman)--recedes into a morbid cloud of repression and denial. As the girls are forced to retreat from everyday life by their conservative mother, they become the subject of fascination for a group of neighborhood boys, who narrate the story and hope to rescue the girls from their listless confinement.
The first feature by director-screenwriter Sofia Coppola (Francis Ford Coppola's daughter), THE VIRGIN SUICIDES is a mesmerizingly atmospheric film that perfectly captures both the moody tone of the book and the light-saturated feel of the 1970s. Dunst gives a standout performance as the promiscuous Lux, who becomes the sole obsession of high school ladies' man Trip Fontaine (Josh Hartnett). The movie also includes cameos by Danny DeVito and Scott Glenn. In addition to songs by Heart and Todd Rundgren, the film features an evocative score by the French duo Air.

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Sophia Coppola's alternately dreamy and unsettling film about five suburban sisters who all mysteriously kill themselves (the voice-over tells you as much in the first five minutes) casts a witchy spell that lingers like drugstore perfume on a hot day. Beautifully adapted from Jeffrey Eugenides' icily perfect novel(perhaps the best, if not only, work of fiction narrated exclusively in the first-person plural), the 1970s-set film is constructed as the collective memory of the neighbourhood boys who worshipped the beautiful Lisbon girls, blonde sylph-like teen siblings whose beauty and self-destruction still haunts and perplexes the narrators, now grown men.

Why did they do it? Maybe because their Catholic mother (Kathleen Turner, magnificently clenched) locked them all up when near-youngest daughter Lux (the exquisite Kirsten Dunst) stayed out all night after the prom. Maybe it was due to a kind of pubertal feminine hysteria, set off by the first suicide of the youngest daughter Cecilia. Maybe they were infected by a more general malaise (the film fairly teams with images of dying elm trees, infested lakes and fetid nastiness). Or maybe they will just never know what it's like, in the words of Cecilia, to be a 13-year-old girl.

Coppola has a canny eye for 1970s kitsch and the tawdry, touching magic totems of girlhood (tampons, bright bikinis, half-used make-up) and coaxes terrific deadpan performances both from the younger cast and the veterans. (James Woods as the nerdy Lisbon patriarch is as delightfully cast against type as Turner.) For all the languid gloom, there is great wit in the observation of 1970s decor and playful touches abound: airbrushed flashbacks like vintage Timotei commercials; inserts to reveal Lux has the name of her date magic markered on her knickers; teeth and eyes that sparkle unnaturally with post-production tricks. The soundtrackhits just the right wistful ironic note with a mix of period tunes by Todd Rungren, Gilbert O'Sullivan and the like, complemented by the electronica of French pop band Air (whose standalone efforts for the film are also available on a separate CD. A film as unforgettable as first love. --Leslie Felperin

Aspect Ratio:	1.66 Wide Screen, 16:9 Wide Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Original Theatrical Trailer
Subtitles:	None
Year:	1999
Release Date:	November 20, 2000
Runtime:	93 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	P 8984 D V D
Keywords:	Comedy, General, Virgin, Wide, Screen, Drama, Suicides
Genre:	Drama