The+Virgin+Suicides

The Virgin Suicides, Sofia Coppola’s first feature film, follows the fascination of a group of boys over the eventual suicides of five sisters that were their friends. The film has several themes, without being able to pinpoint the most important one. One of Sofia Coppola’s most obviously recurring themes, isolation, is clearly present, as the whole family is gossiped about and looked upon as outcasts by the neighborhood following Cecilia (the youngest sister)’s attempted suicide. This theme is made even more blatantly obvious when the girls are pretty much kept under house arrest by their mother, due to Lex (Kristin Dunst) not being home by curfew after Homecoming dance. Lack of understanding or the confusion of growing up is also one of the main themes of the film, through sub-themes such as sexual longing. In this sense, the film can also be thought of as a coming of age story for the boys. The film is presented through the viewing point of the group of boys, with a single narrator serving to provide insight in the past tense on the sort of effect that the Lisbon sisters had had on them. Coppola uses many techniques to give it a dreamlike quality to highlight that the story (set in the mid-70s) was told through memory, as well as the fact that the narrator was still a teenaged boy, and so the way that he had seen things were perhaps a bit unrealistic. One such example is the usage of dry humor that slightly lightens Cecilia’s suicide scene from a depressingly dark scene to a bittersweet one. After her father (James Woods) holding her limp body in shock in the lawn where she had jumped out of her window for several seconds, the sprinklers come on. Coppola’s usage of sound also helps create this slightly dreamlike atmosphere, as she cuts songs abruptly in the middle as the scene changes on several occasions. This creates a jolting effect that results in a less smooth progression in the film, perhaps as the narrator can’t remember certain things. Coppola also highlights the fact that the main character was a voyeur himself, as after Lux gets home after curfew, we aren’t in the middle of the action as her mother yells at her. On the contrary, this scene is presented in a long shot from the other side of the road, her mother is barely audible, and the taxi driving away muffles her words even more. Coppola also highlights the way that the Lisbon family is outcast starting with Cecilia’s suicide attempt, as scenes of gossiping women, or simply their voices, are used as transitions. The ending of the film is more tranquil, and representative of how the collective group of boys, although never forgetting, did grow up and are no longer kids. The four boys are standing by the road, as the camera pulls back and away, representing how the narrator himself is no longer really the boy that he was back in the memories of the girls. The themes that are present in this film will go on to form an important part of Sofia Coppola’s trademark style. Loneliness and isolation are two themes that have been prominent themes in all of her feature films to date. The confusion of growing up can be tied to the confusion of having new responsibilities that characters must undertake in order to progress as human beings, another recurring theme in Coppola’s work.

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