In picture-perfect 1970s American suburbia, five beautiful teenage sisters all killed themselves. Their haunting, almost mythical presence in the memories of the young boys who knew them is reflected upon in The Virgin Suicides. The boys, now adult men, longingly look back on Lux (Kirsten Dunst), Mary, (A.J. Cook), Cecilia (Hannah R. Hall), Therese (Leslie Hayman) and Bonnie Lisbon (Chelsea Swain), in Sofia Coppola’s haunting and elegiac portrait of girlhood and American adolescence.
The Virgin Suicides continues to be a favorite among film fans to this day, and is often regarded as Coppola’s best film (it was also, notably, her directorial debut). With its tone poem interpretation of teenage angst, empathetic exploration of female coming-of-age and unshakeable, infectious melancholy, The Virgin Suicides remains as mysterious as the feeling of falling in love for the first time.
