Set in a typical Michigan suburb in America, ‘The Virgin Suicides’ is not your usual teen movie. It deals with more realistic subjects without being obvious, common or predictable. The film tells the story of five incredibly beautiful sisters and their mysterious lives, narrated in the words of the neighbourhood boys who adored them from faraway and regarded them as unattainable. Whilst it is quite the contrary in real life, in the film it is the boys that are obsessed with the girls. Therese, Mary, Bonnie, Lux (Kirsten Dunst) and Cecilia are considered to be as normal as teenagers could be until Cecilia attempts to commit suicide. This event causes the boys to become even more intrigued in the girls’ lives in an effort to discover the hidden truth.
Why would someone so young not appreciate life’s beauty?
‘’Obviously, Doctor, you've never been a 13-year-old girl.’’ This is the reason Cecilia gives to the doctor when asked why she attempted suicide. It suggests that the girls were unhappy, although they never showed it, and that their family was never able to understand or deal with it. The film itself does not focus on the reasons why the girls committed suicide but the suicides themselves and their impact on the family and society. The director skilfully turns the suicides into something that could not have been avoided and this only increases our feeling of mystery and drama.
When Cecilia ultimately commits suicide, the Lisbon family receives a terrible blow that they would perhaps never recover from. Nonetheless, Lux (Kirsten Dunst) makes an effort to have a life. She goes out with Trip Fontaine (Josh Hartnett), high school’s bad boy. Trip takes his shot and persuades Mr Lisbon (James Woods) to ask ‘the wife’ if he could accompany Lux to the Ball. Mrs Lisbon agrees, provided Trip finds respectable escorts for the remaining sisters as well and makes the 11 o’clock curfew. This particular event is the girls’ last chance at happiness. Unfortunately, this night of freedom will have terrible consequences for the Lisbons. Trip abandons Lux on the football pitch and she misses her curfew. This results in the girls being taken out of school and being imprisoned at home by their dominant mother (Kathleen Turner). This outbreak could well have caused the inevitable end to follow.
The girls later decided to ask the neighbourhood boys to help them escape. But, the boys are then stunned to find out that the girls have committed suicide while they were there in the house trying to help them make an escape from their horrible life. They later described the girls’ action as selfish as they did not think about the effects their deaths would have on the boys.
"I never thought 'The Virgin Suicides' was about suicide at all," Ms. Coppola said. "The reason I got involved in the first place was that I didn't want to see a film of this book that was going to be morbid, violent or sexual. What I loved about it when I first read it was that it's like a celebration of first love and how that haunts you forever. Its real theme is loss and the idea that things happen in life that you have no explanation for. The story is made up of memories and fragments of memories, and the feeling I got from it is that you can never figure out what they all mean until you stop trying, and then you just remember the real meaning of people. And of the time when they were suddenly gone and how it changed everything." She added, "Everyone has to go through something like that."
Although it is unlike the stereotypical teen movie, it still has it’s moments of magic like any other teen movies; the prom, the unfamiliar family party and the phone conversations spoken only by records.
