The Virgin Suicides

Synopsis: In suburban 1970’s Michigan the Lisbon family, made up of an ineffectual father (James Woods) and overbearing mother (Kathleen Turner) and their five teenage daughters, live out the timeless generational conflict with tragic consequences.

The 1970s with its sense of being a generation stumbling between a past it has rejected and a future to which it cannot commit is a perfect setting for an exploration of teen angst. Unlike a recent film with which this will be compared, the mega-hit American Beauty The Virgin Suicides does not imbue suburban dysfunctionality with ironic theatricality. Not that it is graphically realist but its nostalgic voice-over is full of regret for the wasted lives of the beautiful sisters living in a virtual prison of well-intended but misguided over-protectiveness.

Much of what we see here we have already seen many times before in scenes from innumerable American coming-of-age films - indeed Copolas own 1998 14m shor lack and white film Lick the stars - but what sets the film apart is the writing in both the original novel by Jeffery Eugenides on which it is based and Coppola’s adaptation and directorial handling of it.

First-time director Coppola has translated the emotionally-disturbing material into the filmic mode with a lightness of touch and observational distance that is moving rather than manipulative, empathetic rather than dramatic. In this respect the narration works well to keep the film’s principal characters at arms'-length. Indeed the Lisbon family remains very much an enigma to the narrator and his, then young, friends.

Coppola never goes beyond this point of view, a telling strategy that enhances the sense of estrangement and gives the film its resonance. The girls are almost a single flaxen-haired, fair-skinned entity, characterised only by small differences and there is no insight into the parents – specifically the neurotically puritanical mother (a stand-out performance from Kathleen Turner) and the timidly-dependent father (an unusual role for Woods) - or their relationship. Rather, as watchers, we join the boys in observing a phenomenon that moves us yet we are unable to understand, let alone change. Their helplessness is a microcosm of the helplessness of us all to prevent the inevitability of personal suffering or the simple twists of fate as we grow up.

This sounds quite gloomy but The Virgin Suicides is not a gloomy film. There is much humour in the story and the performances are excellent all round. There is the usual naff '70’s fashion, together with a perky soundtrack of some very cheesy songs, all deftly put together in a beguiling package that only a heart of stone could resist.

 

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