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THE VIRGIN SUICIDES

REVIEWED BY CHARITY BISHOP

Our rating: 2 out of 5

Because of: mature thematic elements, sexual content

Rated:

It was a numb feeling when I first heard about it. That numbness soon wore into horror, followed by feelings of intense sorrow and guilt as I wondered what I might have done or not done to cause someone I knew to commit suicide. Even though we were not close, I had grown up around this man, watched him suffer through his wife's illness, offered my condolences when she was gone. A movie like Virgin Suicides brings back all those memories.

The boys have pondered it for more than thirty years, the steps leading up to the untimely demise of the five Lisbon sisters. Even years later, married and with children of their own, whenever they happen to meet at school reunions or in the street, they cannot help but ponder again the details, attempting to discern what happened and went so terribly wrong that five beautiful girls would kill themselves for no reason at all. Twenty-five years in the past, the Lisbons are a mystery to all the boys of the neighborhood. Gloriously blonde, willowy, and radiant, their smiles are secretive and knowing, kept behind the closed doors of the family home, where their over-protective parents strive to keep the promiscuous, drug-laden "freedom" of the sixties out.

Shortly after the youngest, Cecelia (Hanna Hall) attempts to end her life with a razor in the bathtub, local psychiatrist recommend to Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon (James Woods, Kathleen Turner) that they integrate their girls further into society, in the hope that she and her sisters might make friends outside the home. While entertaining the neighborhood teenagers, Cecelia throws herself out an upstairs window onto the stake fence in the front yard. Her suicide devastates her parents and causes a ripple among her sisters. Lux (Kirsten Dunst) becomes more aggressive at school, and it's not long before she's involved with local bad boy Trip (Josh Hartnett). Her misbehavior causes her and Mary (A.J. Cook), Therese (Leslie Hayman), and Bonnie (Chelse Swain) to suffer the consequences.

This film is not "entertaining," and it's not uplifting. There's a sense of dread and curiosity throughout, as you await with mingled anticipation and horror the inevitable end of the girls. Such beautiful, amusing, and seemingly content sisters they seem to be, leaving the audience in the same state of confusion as the boys attempting to tell their story. You wonder why they did it, what prompted such behavior, if there might have been any means of preventing it. That, I suppose, is at the heart of the story, attempting to make sense of a senseless act that so many people have participated in over the years. There is no logic behind suicide, nothing but broken dreams and battered hearts, and the grief and shame of loved ones. If the film serves any purpose, it is to remind us that suicide does not hurt the one who commits it nearly as much as those left behind to wonder how it could have been prevented.

Much of the content is mild, but does contain one unusually graphic sexual encounter and the implications of several others, as the boys spy on the girls through their telescope. After having her heart broken, Lux channels her rebellion into becoming casually promiscuous. A bleed-in shows the audience that she has written her boyfriend's name onto her underwear. She and Trip make out passionately in his car before eventually going all the way on the football field. There's one sexual remark, and a handful of mild profanities, along with an abuse of Jesus' name. None of the suicides are graphically depicted, but we're told what has happened, along with brief shots of prone bodies.

One has to wonder at the mindset of the girls, if not the filmmakers, for showing us such a bleak and sad story. Whatever was Lux thinking when she intentionally brought the boys in to find the bodies? And why did Sofia Coppola desire to bring it to the big screen? Whatever the purpose, it's not for the faint of heart.