Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4917 in DVD
• Released on: 2000-12-04
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Anamorphic, PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 93 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Sophia Coppola's alternately dreamy and unsettling film about five suburban sisters who all mysteriously kill themselves (the voice-over tells you as much in the first five minutes) casts a witchy spell that lingers like drugstore perfume on a hot day. Beautifully adapted from Jeffrey Eugenides' icily perfect novel (perhaps the best, if not only, work of fiction narrated exclusively in the first-person plural), the 1970s-set film is constructed as the collective memory of the neighbourhood boys who worshipped the beautiful Lisbon girls, blonde sylph-like teen siblings whose beauty and self-destruction still haunts and perplexes the narrators, now grown men.

Why did they do it? Maybe because their Catholic mother (Kathleen Turner, magnificently clenched) locked them all up when near-youngest daughter Lux (the exquisite Kirsten Dunst) stayed out all night after the prom. Maybe it was due to a kind of pubertal feminine hysteria, set off by the first suicide of the youngest daughter Cecilia. Maybe they were infected by a more general malaise (the film fairly teams with images of dying elm trees, infested lakes and fetid nastiness). Or maybe they will just never know what it's like, in the words of Cecilia, to be a 13-year-old girl.

Coppola has a canny eye for 1970s kitsch and the tawdry, touching magic totems of girlhood (tampons, bright bikinis, half-used make-up) and coaxes terrific deadpan performances both from the younger cast and the veterans. (James Woods as the nerdy Lisbon patriarch is as delightfully cast against type as Turner.) For all the languid gloom, there is great wit in the observation of 1970s decor and playful touches abound: airbrushed flashbacks like vintage Timotei commercials; inserts to reveal Lux has the name of her date magic markered on her knickers; teeth and eyes that sparkle unnaturally with post-production tricks. The soundtrack hits just the right wistful ironic note with a mix of period tunes by Todd Rungren, Gilbert O'Sullivan and the like, complemented by the electronica of French pop band Air (whose standalone efforts for the film are also available on a separate CD. A film as unforgettable as first love. --Leslie Felperin

Special Features
1.66 Wide Screen
16:9 Wide Screen
DVD 9
English
English
Region 2
Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround English
Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
Original Theatrical Trailer
None

Synopsis
Based on the 1993 novel by Jeffrey Eugenides, THE VIRGIN SUICIDES tells the dreamlike tale of the Lisbons, a family living in a sheltered 1970s suburbia. When Cecilia (Hannah Hall), the youngest of the five teenage Lisbon daughters, inexplicably commits suicide, the rest of the family--Mr. Lisbon (James Woods), an awkward high school math teacher; Mrs. Lisbon (Kathleen Turner), a stern, humorless housewife; and the four remaining sisters: Lux (Kirsten Dunst), Bonnie (Chelse Swain), Mary (A.J. Cook), and Therese (Leslie Hayman)--recedes into a morbid cloud of repression and denial. As the girls are forced to retreat from everyday life by their conservative mother, they become the subject of fascination for a group of neighborhood boys, who narrate the story and hope to rescue the girls from their listless confinement.
The first feature by director-screenwriter Sofia Coppola (Francis Ford Coppola's daughter), THE VIRGIN SUICIDES is a mesmerizingly atmospheric film that perfectly captures both the moody tone of the book and the light-saturated feel of the 1970s. Dunst gives a standout performance as the promiscuous Lux, who becomes the sole obsession of high school ladies' man Trip Fontaine (Josh Hartnett). The movie also includes cameos by Danny DeVito and Scott Glenn. In addition to songs by Heart and Todd Rundgren, the film features an evocative score by the French duo Air.

Customer Reviews

A haunting film that pales in comparison to the novel
Having read Jeffrey Eugenides' The Virgin Suicides, easily one of the most remarkable, haunting novels ever written, I would have said it was impossible to adapt the story to film - and, to some degree, I would have been right. Still, this film adaptation does as fine as job as is humanly possible to bring the ethereal Lisbon girls and the boys obsessed with them and their tragedy to life. It's an excellent, convoluted movie that defies convention and embraces the mystery of the tragedy, but believe me when I say that anyone remotely interested in this movie simply must read the original novel. This movie offers just the first taste of a surreal and tragic story that haunts the reader as much as the suicides haunt the lives of the boys still trying to understand the mystery of the Lisbon girls they adored in ways they could never have put into words. The true magic of the story isn't the sequence of tragic events that unfold; it's the indescribable, impenetrable, unseen world the girls lived in.

The novel tells the story from the outside looking in, through the eyes of the neighborhood boys who obsessed over the Lisbon girls, dreamed about them, and sought some form of access to their haunting inner world. The girls themselves were ethereal creatures spotted only sporadically, surreal ghosts of the lively, vibrant girls they should have been. A movie could never recreate such an abstract viewpoint - the only possible way to do it is to take us into the Lisbon house from the very start. We see what takes places within those walls, watch the interactions of the girls with their parents and one another, and that obviously takes away from some of the mystery inherent in the novel. Even still, we don't get to know the girls as well as we do in the novel. Only two stand out - Constance and Lux, while the other three are simply there, impossible to call by name or recognize by individual nature. That's the main weakness of this otherwise fine adaptation. There's a rushed sort of feeling to the story, and we really needed more time to know and understand Bonnie, Mary, and Therese.

Kirsten Dunst was a perfect choice to play the sensual free spirit that is Lux, while Hanna R. Hall is wonderful as the enigmatic Cecilia, the real lynchpin for the entire story. The film, quickly launching into the traumatic events of the story, doesn't really give us enough time to really see who Cecilia is, and that robs it of some of its heart-touching power, I'm afraid. James Woods plays the subdued role of Mr. Lisbon brilliantly, but Kathleen Turner just never really seemed to capture Mrs. Lisbon successfully enough for me. Then there's Josh Hartnett - not my favorite actor - in full 70s regalia. His character is an important link to Lux, but I think he gets too much time in the movie, to the point that it takes away from the true vision of the other boys' obsession with the girls. The conclusion, on the other hand, feels much too rushed. It's a dark and shocking scene that almost seems to happen in slow motion in the novel, but in the film it all happens so fast that you don't really have sufficient time to digest it. None of these things are a problem for those familiar with Eugenides' novel, but viewers who haven't read the book just won't get the full effect of the tragedy, I'm afraid.

words cannot express the beauty...
...of this film. Being a teenager, i can understand how my review may not be helpful in convincing you to buy this. But hear me out anyway. Firstly, who watches the credits all the way through on movies? very few i'd imagine. This was the first movie that i watched all the credits for, simply because i couldn't move, it was one of the purest, most beautiful and unapologetic films i have ever seen in my life.
In a similar way to American Beauty and Pulp Fiction, the film isn't really about anything in terms of epic story, but is simply about the lives of the characters, and their emotions (anyone who says that human lives have a plot is obviously lying) and thus touches you all the more through its lack of story in the traditional sense.
I do apologise but i must cut my review short as someone else neeeds to use the phone line. Buy this film people, it is all i can say.

cool directing debut
The Virgin Suicides Cert 15
Director: Sofia Coppola
Stars: Hannah Hall, James Woods, Josh Hartnet
Kathleen Turner, Kirsten Dunst

In corners of second hand video shops are scores of videos that although Critically acclaimed, and coveted by Hardened film collectors. They lay largely undiscovered by most of the general public and if, The Virgin Suicides a directorial debut from Sophia Coppola, shares this fate it will be one of the greatest travesties in film making history.

Beautifully directed, this film relies on narration in the same way as Stand By Me and American Beauty and far from being a distraction the dialogue enhances and enriches the visuals.
The Story is set in typical American Suburban neighbourhood. In particular it focuses on the tragic circumstances surrounding the Suicides of five sisters, as seen through the eyes of the boys who live opposite. Oppressed by an over protective mother (Turner) and understandably affected by the suicide of 13 year old sister Cecilia (Hanna Hall) the Lisbon girls future is almost certainly sealed when, Lux (Kirsten Dunst) has an ill fated one night stand with High school heartthrob Trip Fontaine. As a result Mrs Lisbon locks the girls up behind closed doors, which leads to their tragic, yet inevitable deaths. The casting is spot on with excellent supporting roles from the ever-dependable James Woods playing the apologetic father and high School teacher,'Mr Lisbon' and in Mrs Lisbon Coppola has almost rediscovered Kathleen Turner who stars as the sometimes-neurotic mother of the tragic girls, in one of her finest roles since The War Of The Roses.
This Film is a modern Classic, adapted sensitively, from Jeffrey Eugenides novel, and is almost Shakespearean in its delivery. Although largely unnoticed as an actress, Sophia Coppola has found her niche in directing and could go on to be as renowned as her father the great Francis Ford Coppola.