I was initially drawn to this movie by James Woods. He's been my favorite actor for many years. Then the story drew me in further.The five beautiful Lisbon sisters are living in a virtual prison run by their fanatically religious parents (Woods, Kathleen Turner). Things go from bad to worse when one of the girls commits suicide.Josh Hartnett was pretty fresh off his very solid performance in The Faculty. Here he plays Trip Fontaine, a school football player. Kirsten Dunst plays Lux Lisbon, the object of his affection. When Trip and three friends manage to get permission to take the sisters to the homecoming dance, this is when things take a little turn for the bizarre. Lux arrives home way after curfew and their parents, particularly their mother, lock them down even tighter.The scene I found the most touching was the girls and the boys communicating by phone using records to say what they wanted to say. The story was set in 1974 so yes, records.On the whole, the movie was a real downer. No happy ending for anyone. As I write this, I've not read the book, so I have no basis for comparison there. I will say that the time I spent watching this movie was time well spent. The actors turned in top flight performances and Sofia Coppola's career as a movie director flew out of the gate with this movie.

Set in 1974, the story centres around a group of teenage boys and their fascination with five mysterious sisters known as the Lisbon girls in their final days.The story begins with the attempted, and then successful, suicide of the youngest Lisbon, Cecilia who impales herself on a metal fence during a party that was intended to cheer her up after her first suicide attempt. The family are left devastated and while the four remaining sisters, Therese, Mary, Bonnie and Lux (played perfectly by Kirsten Dunst) don't outwardly display the same self-destructive tendencies Cecilia showed, it is clear that their strict upbringing by their passive father and overly religious mother is a source of discontentment for them; most notably Lux, the youngest and easily least content of the remaining girls.A glimmer of hope appears when Trip Fontaine (Josh Hartnett), the cocky high-school heartthrob falls in love with Lux, who ignores him at first, which makes him want her more. He asks her to the homecoming dance and her parents reluctantly agree but only if he can find dates for all of the sisters so that they can all go. There are, of course, no shortage of potential dates.The evening goes well until Lux misses curfew because she is having sex with Trip on the football field. He loses interest in Lux immediately afterwards and abandons her, leaving her to make her way home the next morning by herself, causing the girls' parents to put them all on total lock down. They are taken out of school and withdrawn from the world almost entirely.Feeling dreadful for the girls, the neighbourhood boys do what they can to help them feel connected to the world, such as playing song lyrics down the phone to each other and using flashing lights to communicate Morse code across the street.The lock down seems to send Lux over the edge as she starts having sex with random boys on the roof of the house, much to the boy's amusement.One evening the boys think their luck is in when the sisters invite them over after Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon are asleep, seemingly to go for a joyride or road trip. But when they arrive Lux appears to be in a melancholy mood. In reality, the sisters have each taken their life in a different way in a different room of the house and they just wanted the boys to witness it.I must admit that I went into this movie biased towards liking it as years before viewing I had the ear candy that is the soundtrack composed by French duo, 'Air' that compliments the movie's dreamy, surreal tone perfectly.No real reason or catalyst is ever given as to why the sisters feel that suicide is the only escape from their present reality and some feel that the movie glamourizes suicide (the movie is very beautiful), but I would argue that as the story is told through the eyes of a boy who idealises the girls, many years after the events of the movie took place, he is telling the story as he remembers it, not how things actually were.

Yea, Silver Spoon and all that, but Just because doors are open and You have all the Money in the World, doesn't mean You can Create Your Own Style and Deliver the Goods. Director/Writer Sofia Coppola, in Her Directorial Debut, manages to be Taken Seriously on Her own.For a Novice Filmmaker She Impresses on a surface level with Artsy shots of Girly Things and the Film is about Girly Things and the way Girly Things Titillate Boys. It's also about Parental Oppression to the point of Abuse and Torture. The Movie is Downbeat with a Backbeat of Pop Cultural and High-School Flash. It tells its Tale of Trouble in Paradise with a Good Look and Bad Outcome in a way that is somewhat Refreshing. The Visuals in Virgin are what Shine whereas the Narration and some of the Montage can be Clunky at times.Overall, it's a bit Different where it Needs to be and is Engaging enough to make it Above Average for this Type of Teen Angst Thing. But it does feel Awkward at times and some of Her Flourishes, mostly the Writing, doesn't quite have the Impact Intended. The Ending is Clumsily Handled, but the getting there is Worth It, especially for its Targeted Teen Female Audience. It is by default a Chick-Flick, and a Good One.

This film is such a tearjerker and gives you a whole amount of fear for these girls because their parents were such religious control freaks. It was really awful to see the sisters die one by one especially Kirsten Dunst's character Lux Lisbon.Now at the beginning, I thought the parents were just ordinary folk wanting for the daughters to do well in school. However as the movie goes on, you would really be more scared for the girls sake. I say the father and mother beat them up too as well as burning some of their stuff.Lets just say, I'm glad this is a fiction movie!