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New Century of Cinema
DOWSE Guide to the
Movies
by Tony Lee editor of
Pigasus
Press
The Virgin Suicides
Director: Sofia Coppola
97 minutes (15)
review by Simon Woodward
Set in a Michigan suburb during the early 1970s, The Virgin
Suicides is a mystery without the respite of an explanation. The story of the
suicide of five sisters, mediated through the memories of a group of neighbourhood
boys.
James Woods plays the girls' father, an eccentric maths teacher - in a
performance far removed from his normally edgy machismo - and Kathleen
Turner their creepily overprotective, god-fearing mother. Although it is
apparent that it is, in particular, the actions of the mother - the long
term grounding of the girls, burning of rock albums, the refusal to allow
the girls to date - that warps the girls' relationship with the world,
Coppola does not take the easy option by making them into monsters. They
are bad parents, weak and scared of the world, but their actions do not
seem enough to drive their daughters with all their intelligence, beauty
and youth to mass suicide.
At the centre of the film lies the performance of Kirsten Dunst as the most
precocious of the girls, Star. She is opaque and dazzling, perfectly
catching the confused beauty and pain of adolescence. It is her breaking of
the rules which leads to the Turner destroying the sisters' flimsy
connection to the world and their ultimate suicide.
At the beginning and end of the film the male narrators' admit they still
do not understand what drove the girls to commit suicide. There were things
unseen, unknown, beyond them. But the mystery of that sun-heavy summer
still lies on them. It is the same for the viewer and it is a measure of
the film's achievement that you feel haunted rather than cheated by this.
read a review of the soundtrack from this film at:
Soundtrax
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