Virgin Suicides

The Virgin Suicides

Starring James Woods, Kathleen Turner, Kirsten Dunst and Josh Hartnett

Written and directed by Sofia Coppola

Based on the novel by Jeffrey Eugenides

Good

(HeadlineMuse rating system)

Review by

Mark Greene

It must be hard to be Francis Ford Coppola’s daughter and want to direct. Yet, Sophia Coppola’s debut feature film impresses on many levels. What I find particularly winning about The Virgin Suicides is what others most object to; namely, its lack of significant character and plot development. The film does succeed on an imaginal level, however, by presenting an intricately woven tapestry of nuances that, when seen objectively, tells a story with still images, much like medieval tapestries tell theirs.

The story told here is of the fundamental mystery of opposites, especially those manifest in the form of boys and girls growing up in what looks like the oh-so-very-innocent white, affluent suburbs of the mid 1970’s. Of course there is sex, of course there are drugs, and, as the soundtrack documents, there is rock and roll. Nevertheless, the voiceover is told from the present day, and so what we witness on the screen falls under the purveyance of Mnemosyne, the Goddess Memory, mother of the nine Muses, the patron goddesses of the arts. As a earnest tribute to Memory, The Virgin Suicides, successfully evokes the paradox known to every teenager—that life is simultaneously suffused with delicious magic and wretched irony.

Such irony is evoked early in the film by juxtaposing images of the five beautiful Lisbon sisters, aged thirteen to seventeen, with the tagging of a fungus-infected tree, destined to be cut down, in their front yard. As the title suggests, death is nearby, and so these winsome, leggy, teenage sisters appear so much the more sparkling in their smallest of gestures. Their witnesses are the now-grown-up boys who find more meaning and intimacy in their reveries of the Lisbon girls than with their real-life wives. It is as if to say the act of remembering is a privilege that comes with a great price, because to remember is to feel who one is and with feeling can come pain.

But, to honor the opposites, there is also joy. For these boys, joy is found in the realization, within every fiber of their being, that the Lisbon sisters "knew everything about us and we couldn’t even begin to fathom them." And so, the gauntlet of the alchemical mystery is thrown summoning the opposites of spirit (represented by the boys), to know matter (represented by the girls), in a dance as old as the ages. Acknowledging that ‘the homecoming dance’ of the film is as good a venue for this principal as any, The Virgin Suicides takes a next step by suggesting that the material side of this balance is wounded.

When little Cecilia’s mother, played very well by a nearly unrecognizable Kathleen Turner, covers her daughter’s bandaged wrists with party beads and streamers, it is pretty clear to this reviewer that the wound that is asking to be seen will only worsen until we fully acknowledge its horror. Cecelia Lisbon speaks out early in the film on behalf of the species dying at the hands of the planet’s worst ecological disaster, humankind.

And so the themes and events that transpire in this film both invoke and are blessed by several of Mnemosyne’s daughters, including Melpomene, the Muse of tragedy who asks us, ‘What can be more tragic than taking one’s life before knowing love? And we answer, ‘Taking one’s life after knowing love.’ Euterpe, the Muse of music and lyric poetry, gives us joy knowing that even the most enigmatic of those of the opposite sex are responsive to our cries when expressed in song. And as for Polyhymnia, the Muse of sacred poetry, what is more reverent and poetic than a modern film seeking to honor the memory of beauty that has passed on but still lives in the scrapbooks, shoeboxes and photo collections of our hearts? Rest assured that the five Lisbon sisters, Cecilia, Lux, Bonaventura, Mary and Therese, will be remembered in this way.

Who is there when you remember?

Mark Greene

July 2000