The Virgin Suicides
Five young, strikingly beautiful girls coming of age in the mid 1970’s under the strict household headed by an austere Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon and the mystery behind their reason’s for ending their lives so early is the setting of this film by Sofia Coppola. Sofia is the daughter of the famed director Francis Ford Coppola and The Virgin Suicides is her first major film. The narrator of the movie is one of the boys that had an obsession, along with the rest of the neighborhood boys, over the Lisbon sister’s and their lives. The story begins in the summer when the youngest of the Lisbon girls, Cecilia, attempts suicide for first time but is not successful until she impales herself on the wrought iron fence below her bedroom. After the first attempt Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon seem to relax their strictness, heeding the advice given by Cecilia’s psychiatrist to allow her to engage in social activity with boys “her own age outside of the codification of school.” Throughout the film the girls are seen exuding the same flirtatiousness and angst mostly all teenage girls do, especially by the 14 year old Lux. The ordered and conventional lifestyle was something the girls wanted to break out of, which is only natural for a lot of teens. Things get interesting when Trip Fontaine enters the picture and convinces Mr. Lisbon to persuade Mrs. Lisbon to allow the girls to be taken to their very first prom or outing with a group of boys. After the prom Lux gets devious and does the dirty dance with one Trip Fontaine, whom left the scene and Lux to find a cab home. She failed to come home that night and upon arrival the next morning the household is turned in to a lockdown of sorts, the girls pulled from school and the house turns even more dismal than directly following Cecilia’s “accident.” With the death of Cecilia and the demise of the girls’ little social life that they had, things seem to be taking a downward spiral for the Lisbon family even more. The first thing...