Sofia Coppola’s (director/writer) script seems to branch out in all directions hoping to present a perspective from every angle. As if to state that the film is merely a ponderance, and not an answer, nor even a criticism of the illusion of American lifestyle, the story gives a disjointed feeling by avoiding to make anything certain, including the protagonist, or the antagonist. Though the story is set in the 70’s, a time of greater repression, its message is contemporary if not timeless.

The characters of the Lisbons, a conservative family with five teenage daughters, and the neighborhood boys who are obsessed with the Goddess-like visions of the Lisbon girls appear as sketches rather than fully formed personalities. Even as sketches, though, these characters have a mythological quality reaching deep into the gaping crevice of the human condition. As Mr. & Mrs. Lisbon, James Woods and Kathleen Turner embody the illuminating range of tragedy, comedy, and absurdity.

The search for insights that might explain the Lisbon girls’ suicides reveals a number of issues that could tear a family apart. Emotional disconnection fed by religious repression and rigid social conventions seem the obvious causes from our perspective as viewers, but they are hard to recognize for people desperately holding on to a sense of order, however misconstructed it may be.

Mr. Lisbon seems aware that his wife’s insensitivity and forced propriety is destroying the family. Through his passive helplessness, he refuses to change their course and erodes his substance with a whimper, not a bang, as he fades into insane oblivion of escape from the prison of family life.

With all of its poignancy, the film suffers from apparent inconsistencies that might have arisen as a challenge of adapting Jeffrey Eugenides’s novel. We cannot believe that a teenage girl like Lux (Kirsten Dunst) who identifies with the rebellion and passion of rock’n’roll idols, would let herself be cut away from her freedom like a meek lamb. Lux’s sexual insatiability as she eventually explodes into self-destructive revenge "fucking" especially indicates that she would have probably erupted in rage before she’d let her mother force her to burn her precious records. This is one of the logic leaps we couldn’t get over.

The narrator in the form of a conglomeration of the grown neighborhood boys looking back on the mystery of the Lisbon suicides is another ill-devised element. The boys express their yearning to know the girls, to help them out of their isolation, but the little that they do doesn’t reach far beyond a mythical fantasy with characters that aren’t real. The boys never get to know the Lisbon clan, nor do we. This may be true to Coppola’s artistic or thematic purpose, but it makes for a sense of disconnection that troubled us.

Although every character is in some way responsible for the resulting tragedy, Mrs. Lisbon is the influence that propels the girls into self-destruction. As much as this film is about feminine tragedy, it is refreshing that the source of repression is not the patriarch but the dominating matriarch. Mrs. Lisbon says that there was never a lack of love in their house, yet she had been running the family like a cool drill sergeant demanding efficiency and obedience first and foremost. Not once does she try to make a genuine connection of compassion or understanding with her husband or her daughters. Her world is built upon rigid, almost obsessive, religious rules, which cater to her tremendous fear of a scandal. Once her control of her world begins to crumble after the first suicide, she tightens the grip yet further. That is the only way she knows how to live, and it is what dooms them all.

As the camera reveals the vivid contrast of shadows and color in the polished suburban world, so we accept Virgin Suicides as an exploration of the overwhelming shadows that deepen in the seemingly idyllic lives. The Lisbon story serves to remind us of how disconnected repression may erupt in self-destructive tragedy.

Official Website

The Virgin Suicides Official Website is one of the best we have seen. It is saturated with a breezy, dreamy, teen emotional tone, much like the bedroom of the Lisbon sisters in the film. The site has e-mail questions and answers from Sofia Coppola, interviews with key cast members, and is easy and quick to navigate. With this film and website as exemplars, we believe Ms. Coppola and her team have a bright future and wish her all the best.