The Virgin Suicides is a 1999 American film written and directed by Sofia Coppola. Based on the novel by Jeffrey Eugenides, the film tells of the suicides of the five Lisbon sisters in an upper middle class suburb of Detroit during the 1970s. The girls' suicides fascinate their community as their neighbors struggle to find an explanation for the acts.
Brief Intro
The story happened in 70's in suburbia of America. The Lisbon moves to this suburbia. The summer has begun. Cecilia Lisbon, who at thirteen is the youngest of five cherubic Lisbon sisters killed herself while taking a bath. Her life is saved, but at a chaperoned party, she jumps out the window onto the fence below, and dies instantly. After the suicide death of their youngest sister, the surviving daughters of the Lisbon family descend into a deep melancholy and eventually become isolated socially and physically by their parents within their small-town Michigan house. Their only contact with the outside world is a group of neighborhood boys who become obsessed with watching and attempting to communicate with the girls. Trip Fontaine, the local dream boy, ducks into the wrong classroom ,seeing Lux Lisbon,the prettiest of the sisters,, he falls irrevocably in love. One night after a party, Trip didn't take Lux home like other boys,he makes love with Lux on the football field. After they make love, Trip abandons Lux, who is forced to walk home alone.In response to Lux's disobedience, Mrs. Lisbon withdraws the girls from school, restricts them to the house, and draws the curtains of the house. Shortly afterwards, the neighbourhood boys begin to see Lux on the roof of the Lisbon house at night having sex with unknown men. The Lisbon house continues to deteriorate, no one is seen leaving the Lisbon house,Just as the boys begin to feel they have lost the girls entirely, succeed in telephoning the Lisbon girls, playing a record over the phone, giving the girls their phone number, and hanging up. The next day the girls call back with a song, and the two groups trade songs all evening until the girls are forced to hang up. The boys' subsequent calls are not answered, but a note appears requesting their help on midnight. Arriving at the Lisbon house as instructed,the boys find Lux smoking alone in the living room. She instructs them to wait in the living room for her sisters to finish packing while she, Lux, waits in the car. The boys wait until they finally find Bonnie's body hanging dead in the basement. Horrified, the boys flee home. Later, the boys realize that all the girls must have killed themselves—Bonnie by hanging, Therese by sleeping pills, Lux by asphyxiation—while the boys waited in the living room. Mary, who stuck her torso in the oven.
charactor
Lovely, wry, playful, inaccessible Lux is the creature of each narrator's dream. The boys watch from school windows as she laughs her beautiful laugh at other boys, and from their treehouse as she responds to the house arrest by having sex on her roof with a stream of faceless men. Both her nascent sexuality before Homecoming and her explicitly sexual escapades after impress the neighborhood boys, who claim that all subsequent women in their lives have, in moments of passion, taken Lux's face.To the boys, Lux's seemingly intuitive knowledge of sex suggests an intimacy with the secrets of the world and concomitantly, a familiarity with death. Yet neither the boys nor Lux's partners are able to fathom the depths of her mind, to determine her thoughts on Cecilia's death, or even her motives for anonymous intercourse. Though her partners find her magnificent—a carnal angel—they report that Lux often seems bored by sex, picking zits on her partner's back or looking off into the distance. Yet her presence and sense of purpose lead the men to feel as if they have been insignificant pawns in Lux's higher plan, echoing the boys' feelings on the night of the June fifteen suicides. Furthermore, her insistence upon the sexual act itself, in the winter theater of the Lisbon roof, seems to suggest a will toward both performance and self-destruction, yet these are precisely the characteristics that the narrators most want from Lux. Thus, it is difficult for the reader to discern Lux's true intentions, as they are observed by the boys' desire.
Narratively, the first signs of Lux appear when Peter Sissen, having dinner at the Lisbon house, passes her bedroom en route to the bathroom and sees her bra hung carelessly from a crucifix. Peter emerges from the bathroom and is confronted by Lux, her hair let down, waiting to get a tampon. This twofold evidence of Lux's budding femininity and sexuality impresses Peter and the boys. Likewise, the tantalizing image of her brassiere foreshadows Lux's subsequent promiscuity in the face of Mrs. Lisbon's strict religious regime. Lux next appears at Cecilia's party, where the narrators realize she is the only Lisbon sister truly as beautiful and mischievous as they had imagined. For some time after, Lux's character retreats behind a series of constraints on her femininity. For example, Mrs. Lisbon wipes off Lux's lipstick or sends her inside to change into a less revealing top. In rebellion against these restrictions, the boys see Lux accepting a ride on a motorcycle, and laughing outside the high school with a delinquent boy.
Like Trip, whose silence and stature excludes him from the group of neighborhood boys, Lux rarely interacts with girls besides her sisters,among her sisters Lux is strikingly individual, venturing out alone into the risky territories of sex, cigarettes, alcohol, and love. Lux's access to the world of men leaves her as a protective intermediary between her sisters and the neighborhood boys—she waits outside for the boys' car at Homecoming and later stalls the boys while her sisters commit suicide. Lux is ultimately abandoned both by the awed boys and by manly Trip, though they will insist they loved her. She was somewhat quiet yet from inside she seemed confident. Lux was a bit of a seductress and the most sexual out of the 5 sisters, she did things the other sisters would never dream of doing. Lux’s character was more about her body language rather than the words she spoke. Lux didn’t speak that often, it was more about what she did, rather than what she said.You can understand why Lux was so desirable to the male characters in the movie.
Narratively, the first signs of Lux appear when Peter Sissen, having dinner at the Lisbon house, passes her bedroom en route to the bathroom and sees her bra hung carelessly from a crucifix. Peter emerges from the bathroom and is confronted by Lux, her hair let down, waiting to get a tampon. This twofold evidence of Lux's budding femininity and sexuality impresses Peter and the boys. Likewise, the tantalizing image of her brassiere foreshadows Lux's subsequent promiscuity in the face of Mrs. Lisbon's strict religious regime. Lux next appears at Cecilia's party, where the narrators realize she is the only Lisbon sister truly as beautiful and mischievous as they had imagined. For some time after, Lux's character retreats behind a series of constraints on her femininity. For example, Mrs. Lisbon wipes off Lux's lipstick or sends her inside to change into a less revealing top. In rebellion against these restrictions, the boys see Lux accepting a ride on a motorcycle, and laughing outside the high school with a delinquent boy.
Like Trip, whose silence and stature excludes him from the group of neighborhood boys, Lux rarely interacts with girls besides her sisters,among her sisters Lux is strikingly individual, venturing out alone into the risky territories of sex, cigarettes, alcohol, and love. Lux's access to the world of men leaves her as a protective intermediary between her sisters and the neighborhood boys—she waits outside for the boys' car at Homecoming and later stalls the boys while her sisters commit suicide. Lux is ultimately abandoned both by the awed boys and by manly Trip, though they will insist they loved her. She was somewhat quiet yet from inside she seemed confident. Lux was a bit of a seductress and the most sexual out of the 5 sisters, she did things the other sisters would never dream of doing. Lux’s character was more about her body language rather than the words she spoke. Lux didn’t speak that often, it was more about what she did, rather than what she said.You can understand why Lux was so desirable to the male characters in the movie.
The neighborhood boys
Their thoughts, interests, actions and dreams reflect the middle-class suburban patriarchy that they inhabit: the boys rake leaves, play football and baseball, tune cars, watch girls, do their homework, attend high school, and envy the knowledge of their older brothers. Though the boys speak in the past tense, there true narrative voice is familiar and deliberate. They present the girls' story after much consideration about the events of the past,and will remember this forever.
Parents
James Woods was playing the father in this movie. Mr Lisbon is a bit of a strange man, but still has a lot of love for his daughters; in the movie it becomes apparent that Mr Lisbon is a bit of a doormat to his wife but Woods successfully brought qualities to the character, which made you feel sympathetic toward him. In particular in one scene after the girls have been locked up in their home, where he begins to talk to plants about photosynthesis.Mrs. Lisbon was bitter, yet for some reason you still felt somewhat sympathetic toward her character. when Lux loses her virginity that night and returns home way past curfew the next morning, in fact, their rigid mom and dad react by pulling the girls out of school completely and locking them away in the house as part of a misguided attempt to both punish and protect them. She felt the need to shelter her daughters from reality, but finally her five daughters killed themselves. Is it ridiculous or something? She even said that I gave them all of my love… Although we cannot definitely sad that the parents exactly had the responsibility to their daughters’ suicides, there is no doubt that they made the opposite effect obviously.
color and light
Orange and yellow pervade the movie ,which reflect that the story happened in hot summer and in case of she using the flesh back to tell the story ,this kind of mysterious yellow colour perfectly mix together with the atmosphere of this film and Coppola uses a soft light and hazy camera, giving the scene an ethereal feel.
music and sound
The whole soundtrack is produced by Air, and is mostly just music. It’s extremely haunting yet has a very chilled out vibe to it, which describes the tone of the movie only too well. The soundtrack is mainly piano, dark and creepy .The music to this movie is extremely important because it sets the scene and I feel that Air have produced an exceptionally good soundtrack for the movie,which is dark yet thought provoking. The music just gels so well with the tone of the movie, it’s exactly how you would imagine it to be.
symbols
diary(dreamer)Reading Cecilia's diary, the boys feel that the girls are their twins. At Homecoming, one boy remarks that the girls are just like his sister. Indeed, except for their suicides, the girls might be anyone.
Shot zooming and camera movement
Change the long shot to the medium shot or zooming to the close shot to show more details of the film.The camera movements were constantly changing, peculiar, bits and pieces which really suited the mood of the story. The atmosphere created is very contradictive that you can sense a dreamy atmosphere yet you know there will be a tragic end to this tale. Coppola has created a very unusual atmosphere but it goes only too well with the story. I don’t know how she’s done it but Coppola has managed to create such an atmosphere in the movie that it has daydream qualities, which makes it a beautiful film yet at the same time there’s something dark and disturbing incorporated into the movie at the same time. The contradictive qualities bought into the movie by Coppola make it sensual and beautiful yet tragic, dark and disturbing.
Change the long shot to the medium shot or zooming to the close shot to show more details of the film.The camera movements were constantly changing, peculiar, bits and pieces which really suited the mood of the story. The atmosphere created is very contradictive that you can sense a dreamy atmosphere yet you know there will be a tragic end to this tale. Coppola has created a very unusual atmosphere but it goes only too well with the story. I don’t know how she’s done it but Coppola has managed to create such an atmosphere in the movie that it has daydream qualities, which makes it a beautiful film yet at the same time there’s something dark and disturbing incorporated into the movie at the same time. The contradictive qualities bought into the movie by Coppola make it sensual and beautiful yet tragic, dark and disturbing.
Set in an unnamed suburb in the American heartland, the particulars of The Virgin Suicides resonate throughout typical suburban America. Though nominally an investigation into five startling deaths, the film's broad exploration of love, sex, passion, fear, obsession, loss, adolescence, and memory is perceptive and deeply universal. The deaths are tragic precisely because the story presents them in the context of a town whose hypocrisies, crises, conflicts, and characters are largely unremarkable. A lot of people have their own interpretations of this film. There are several different ideas brought forward, but there is no wrong or right answer. Why exactly did the Lisbon sisters feel the only way out was death? Why exactly did they kill themselves? I guess that’s left for you to decide. But I must say this film will make you think for a long time after you’ve seen it. The girls kill themselves with ordinary objects, they did it maybe they just feel the horror of the mundane . Unfolding at the cusp of innocence and sexual awakening, and recalled as a memory, The Virgin Suicides is, ultimately, about the preservation of the Lisbon sisters by their own deaths--suspended in time, polished to perfection, and forever untainted by adulthood.
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