When i first heard of this movie after seeing a preview for it before Sleepy Hollow in the theater, I was a bit curious about this movie. Soon, I rented it on VHS and enjoyed it. Being that it is Sofia Coppola's debut movie, with Lost in Translation being her most popular, it's worth watching again and again. The soundtrack by French new wave band Air is classy, and the casting of the women is amazing. Kirsten Dunst is pretty good in this movie during the year she became a huge star thanks in part to Bring it on, crazy beautiful and the cat's meow the year after, and in 2002 her biggie in Spider-Man.

I expected "The Virgin Suicides" to be a heart-wrenching study of five repressed and abused girls who commit suicide. Instead, I got a movie that was... empty, more than anything.Right off the bat it is established that the five sisters of the Lisbon family, aged 13-17 have killed themselves. We hear this from the narrator, a boy who lives across the street from the sisters. His voice-over is retrospective, and it implies that many years have passed since the events of the movie. The movie covers roughly a year leading up to the suicides, and all of the events that transpire in that time (spoiler alert: not much happens)."Romeo and Juliet" is a tragedy. If you read or watch the play, you see the two main characters live their lives and you understand how they are led to suicide. In the play, all the characters are fleshed out and have clear motivations behind their actions. "The Virgin Suicides" is like Romeo and Juliet told from the perspective of Balthasar, Romeo's servant. We don't get the whole picture. In fact, we don't really get any picture at all. All of the sudden, the teenage kids are dead, and we don't know why.Why did the girls do it? The parents don't seem to be abusive. A little strict, sure, but no reason to kill oneself. We get quick glimpses into the mother's supposed cruelty, but she's really not that bad- as far as the viewer can see. The most memorable line in the movie comes from the youngest sister, when she goes to therapy. The doctor asks her why she has attempted suicide, saying he sees no great struggle in her life. The girl responds by saying "clearly doctor, you've never been a teenage girl." This is the closest thing we get to a reason that these girls kill themselves, and it's pretty flimsy and uncompelling.There's nothing wrong with this movie technically. The acting is fine, the writing is good, and the sets look like they are from the 1970s. The soundtrack is pretty good, and I'd say that Coppola has a nice directing style in the movie.There isn't enough substance in this movie for me to recommend it. The credits rolled and I felt like I had missed the whole thing.

A beautifully depressing and sad movie about 5 sisters, who ended their lives at a very young age. The movie has an interesting way of telling a story, the story is told by the boys who loved the girls, but unfortunately the movie feels kind of cold. It is very hard to emotionally engage in the movie, since you never really get any real and emotional character interaction, it never really showed any of the girls communicating with one another.Just 2 of the sisters had their time under the spotlight, for most of the movie, and that, in my opinion, destroyed the real lust and emotions the movie could have had. I wanted to see more character engagement in the film, i get that the idea was to make you feel sad and emotional via the lenghty sad fragments of the girls dieing of boredom, being oppressed by their religious parents, but at least they could have made them talk with each other.When you look at the movie as a whole, it was a really good movie, but then, when you start thinking about some of the details, which i mentioned above, the movie kind of loses its charm and just seems blatant and plain, so it is better to just enjoy it, without trying to figure out the details and flaws of the film.

An extremely hard novel to adapt to the big screen, from one of my favourite novelists Jeffrey Euginides comes the directorial debut of Sofia Coppola who would go on to direct the award-laden Lost In Translation. Kirsten Dunst plays the role very well and the performances given from the parents of the five elusive Lisbon sisters, Kathleen Turner and James Woods were very impressive. The film cleverly mirrors the pungent adolescent anxieties and dark trails of obsession that are laced throughout the novel, however the film is less visceral and more Hollywood than would've been preferred, Sofia polished most of the feeling out of the film, however the story and style forgive all the film's flaws.