The Virgin Suicides (1999)-"R"

Run Time:97 minutes

4 stars out of 4

For many men, there is a girl from his youth who remains, unchanged, impossibly beautiful in memory. This girl becomes all the more painful to remember if she died while still young, before age or reality could alter her memory. Remembering these girls creates an especially deep sense of loss, for if love with her ever was possible, you never got the chance. This is the case of the girls in Sophia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides(1999). The girls are all sisters, the Lisbon family, a group of five in a row, ages 13-17. All pretty, all blonde, all utterly out-of-reach for the neighborhood boys, their presence across the street is a constant topic of conversation and fantasy. The story, based on the novel of the same name by Jeffrey Eugenides, is set in mid-70's suburban Michigan, and plays out itself almost like a dream, with a sequence of events that flow into each other and beautiful, eerie visuals. As the title hints, the girls all commit suicide, leaving all of the boys to attempt to piece together the puzzle of these fascinating girls, and attempt to forget them, for the rest of their lives. As the film puts it, the youngest of the Lisbons, Cecilia is "the first to go," originally attempting to slit her wrists, then succeeding by jumping out of a window. Her untimely death put her sisters even more on the minds of the awkward boys, who desperately try to glimpse into the Lisbons' world, which is so tyrannically controlled by their nervous mother (played by Kathleen Turner) and math teacher father (James Woods). The acting in the film is fantastic, especially from Kirsten Dunst, who plays Lux Lisbon, the prettiest of the sisters, and the only one who doesn't die a virgin. Woods and Turner also contribute admiral performances, as does Josh Hartnett, surprisingly enough, who plays Tripp Fontaine, the most popular guy in school who has "only recently emerged from baby fat to the delight of mothers and daughters alike." In the end, however, what lingers on after seeing this film isn't the plot, the performances, or characters. What remains is the longing for the time when you were 15 or 16, when romance and sex were a total mystery, and when love and girls seemed like an impossibly beautiful dream.