Flak Magazine: Review of The Virgin Suicides, 05-17-00

To make The Virgin Suicides, Sofia Coppola was blessed with the perfect ingredients. A talented cast that features, among other capable names, James Woods, Kathleen Turner and Kirsten Dunst. A brilliant score by an oh-so-hip band. The rights to use time-honored classic rock tunes like Styx's "Come Sail Away" and Aerosmith's "Sweet Emotion." Not to mention genes passed down from the man who made The Godfather and Apocalypse Now.

But somewhere, it all went wrong, and The Virgin Suicides ended up as an empty, beautifully scored, stunningly shot flick about attractive, undeveloped characters living in a wealthy suburb. For cinephiles and would-be filmmakers, Coppola's directorial debut makes for an excellent reference point and source of ideas. Sadly, it also serves as a testament to what can happen when raw talent and creativity run amok.

Jeffrey Eugenides' novel upon which the film is based provides promising enough source material. The Virgin Suicides is the story of the suicides of the five Lisbon sisters and the effect they have upon the community (cleverly called "Gross Point"). But there's a catch. The whole story is told through the eyes of the girls' neighborhood boys, who obsess over the girls to the point of stealing a diary and holding group spying sessions through a telescope and binoculars.

As the girls' strangely obsessive, hyper-religious parents, James Woods and Kathleen Turner are the film's high point. At a time when dysfunctional, white, well-off families seem to be all the rage in cinema, the two veterans work to create a marriage just as bone-chilling as those in even the best fucked-up-people movies like American Beauty and Magnolia.

But it's too bad Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon's depth isn't matched by anyone else in the film, like the five girls for whose deaths the film is named.

Coppola's greatest failure is in not developing the five Lisbon girls beyond their status as an object of desire for their male classmates. Much of the time they are on screen, the girls have no lines; they just lounge about, draping themselves Siamese-cat-style over furniture, trees and one another. At other moments, their dialog is eclipsed by the actions of Woods and Turner. Or the film's music. But more on that later.

It's as if Coppola is using the fact that the film is narrated by someone who never really got to know its subjects as an excuse to avoid coloring in the lines. But if that's the case, why are the girls' parents — whom, correct me if I'm wrong here, the narrator's point of view dictates should be the most enigmatic of all the film's characters — so compelling?

Furthermore, Coppola leans heavily on Air's powerful score, as well as the film's soundtrack (courtesy of Heart, Electric Light Orchestra and various other '70s luminaries). Nary a moment goes by without some sort of ear candy peppering the film's audio.

So the actors are left with a choice: Shout over the music, or go through the motions. It's little surprise that the two most un-hip characters in this immensely hip film are its most compelling. Because of their immeasurable uncool, Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon share the screen with the least music, and Turner and Woods are thus allowed to get to work. The rest of the film's inhabitants, sadly, are about as developed as those of the music videos Coppola's husband, Spike Jonze, directs.

Scenes like the introduction of teenage dreamboat Trip Fontaine (accompanied by Heart's "Magic Man") and another at the prom that showcases Styx's "Come Sail Away" are great music-video style montages, but they're the sort of thing a director can get away with about once per film (witness Paul Thomas Anderson's splendid use of Aimee Mann's "Wise Up" in Magnolia).

Which is pretty much the case with all of Coppola's gimmickry. Scenes like the one in which two sets of characters repeatedly call one another on the phone, play one song off an LP and then hang up, awaiting the callback from the other group are sheer brilliance. But when Coppola crams so many of them together, it's like a trip through a jewelry store that sells nothing but pricey diamond rings with big rocks. Sure, a few may be nice, but how about some variety? Not to mention sophistication.

Someone who didn't know any better might think some talented, cash-poor film student was given a ton of money to make only one film. And she knew this would be the only film she ever made before she had to, I don't know, wait tables for the rest of her life. But she's got all these great ideas and brilliant scenes and clever lines all mapped out in her head. So rather than pick and choose her money shots, she throws all of them into the mix.

Oh, wait. Sofia Coppola's dad is Francis Ford, she's got scads of movie industry friends and she's married to Spike Jonze. She has her own award-winning line of clothing. And she's a renowned photographer whose work has appeared in Interview and Allure. And she's incredibly beautiful, smart, wealthy and talented. So she really has no excuse, does she?

— Eric Wittmershaus (ericw at flakmag dot com)