by Jessica Lynn Lovelace

Created on: March 17, 2010

Virgin Suicides

Released: 2000

Length: 96 minutes

Rating: R (strong thematic elements involving teens)

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

Written and Directed: Sofia Coppola

Music: Air

Narrated: Giovanni Ribisi

Based on novel by Jeffrey Eugenides

Suicide not only affects the immediate family, but it also affects the surrounding community.  Hard questions arise while their answers remain elusive; the only person with those answers is gone.  Sofia Coppola presents this traumatic issue with compassion and delicacy in her film The Virgin Suicides.

The film chronicles the short lives of the Lisbon daughters starting with the first attempted suicide of the youngest Lisbon child, thirteen-year-old Cecilia.  Soon after the attempt, the Lisbon daughters are allowed to host their first and only party.  Unfortunately, during this party Cecilia finally succeeds in killing herself.  Shocked and grieving, the Lisbon family shut themselves inside their house.  Outside, the neighbors and media whisper, pointing fingers of blame.  When school starts again the remaining Lisbon girls make their first public appearance since Cecilia’s death.  Soon, Trip Fontaine (Josh Hartnett), the football star all the girls are in love with, sets his sights on Lux Lisbon (Kirsten Dunst), the only girl who won’t date him.  Fontaine’s diligence allows all the girls to go to their first (and only) school dance.  Lux leaves the dance with Fontaine and misses curfew.  The Lisbon mother, in retribution, pulls the girls out of school and locks them in the house.  After several weeks the Lisbon girls all commit suicide on the same night.

The Lisbon lives unfold on the screen through the eyes of the neighborhood boys.  The only information about the Lisbon girls comes from these boys, accomplished by a narration done by Giovanni Ribisi.  Credible and heartfelt, Ribisi starts the film by introducing the Lisbon girls and starting the boys’ side of the story.  As a group, the boys tried to determine the events that led to the suicides.  They collected souvenirs, objects owned by the Lisbon girls, in an attempt to understand what it was like being a teenage Lisbon girl.  The boys wanted to know who the girls were and what the girls were thinking.  Most of all the boys wanted to know what went wrong in the girls’ lives and how the boys themselves could

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