The Virgin Suicides DVD: Review By brianroche

"The Virgin Suicides" is a movie about peas rolling around on a dinner plate. It's a movie about the scratch of a needle on a record. It's about the way a suburban bedroom looks in the middle of the day with no lights on. It's about the way a teenage boy awkwardly holds his drunken date's hair as she pukes in the bushes. It's about a fake-wood paneled rumpus room. About the way siblings can exist around each other for hours at a time and never say a word. About drinking soda out of glass bottles. About the way a group of kids protectively dote on a special-needs kid from their neighborhood. About the sound of water dripping from a faucet. The way crickets sound at night. The way wind sounds during the day. The way sunlight looks when obscured by tree branches. The look in a girl's eyes when she admits to herself she likes the guy. The look on the guy's face when he admits to himself she'll never like him, and he'll end up carrying her torch forever. "The Virgin Suicides" is about how these details and many others surround our memories of major events - the way you remember what the weather was like on the day of a funeral.

The movie is based on the novel by Jeffrey Eugenides. The story is, basically, that each of the Lisbon sisters commits suicide. They are Cecelia (Hanna Hall), Bonnie (Chelse Swain), Lux (Kirsten Dunst), Mary (A.J. Cook), and Therese (Leslie Hayman). They are all blonde and beautiful, and of reasonable fascination to the boys in their neighborhood. The film is, in fact, told from the boys' collective point of view, and seems to always be hanging back, observing as if not a part of the action. (The film is narrated by Giovanni Ribisi, whose voice represents one, or all, of them). Once Cecelia Lisbon first attempts, and soon after succeeds, at killing herself, it is as if all these shy awkward kids have a reason to be fascinated by them (they're just barely too young to know that reason and attraction seldom share a cab). Their curiosity/obsession/possible actual love of the Lisbon girls kicks into overdrive. While we never find out through them why the girls killed themselves, we do find out a great deal about how they lived and what some of their personalities were like, and about all the little details.

The movie takes place in "Michigan - 25 years ago." 'Michigan', as in a place like where you grew up; and '25 years ago' as in The Past, hazily remembered.

The limitations of memory form much of the film. Some scenes play with a staginess that suggests the characters have been gathered hastily from the narrators' subconscious to re-enact important events, and can't quite remember their lines or their places. Because Lux was the most rebellious, she's remembered with the most detail, pushing the other girls into the background a little bit (although their personalities are absolutely there, if you look). It's as if the narrator(s) have forgotten much of these girls they loved but never got to know, and just lumped them together as a group.

The fellas don't do any favors for themselves, either: the four 'observer' male characters are characterized even less (the only one I've ever remember is named Weiner, the nerd, who theorizes of a stolen Lisbon girl diary, "look at this - the dots on the I's are all over the place! What we have here is a dreamer!"). And at the Prom, one of them essentially forces Bonnie Lisbon to get drunk by placing a plastic bottle of peach Schnapps in front of her and not moving it until she drinks (in a movie filled with death, this tiny moment is the most disturbing).

The group perspective also allows for elements outside of the Lisbon house to enrich the movie's ideas. There's the Dominick Pazzolo digression, about a kid barely into puberty who becomes obsessed with another perfect neighborhood girl. He jumps from his parent's roof in sorrow when she moves away, but the roof is low and he just lands in the bushes and walks off, and out of the movie. There's the slow progression of the dying elm in the Lisbon's front yard, paralleling the family's decline. And, after the death of the Lisbon girls and after their parents have moved away, there is time for the Asphyxiation Party, a surreal debutante ball lit green (the color of avarice, and of a lot of liquor bottles) in which parents and children alike wear gas masks and drink themselves silly. Our collective narrators are all there - one of them kisses a girl, maybe for the first time, and neither he nor the girl look like they're enjoying it much; they kiss because that's what people do. It is as if the Lisbons took not just their lives, but the town's.

Sofia Coppola catches aspects of the girls that male directors might miss. They spend a lot of time together and say very little, communicating with little glances and gestures. Lux in particular has a habit of writing the names of the guys she likes on her bras and underwear - a detail that a male director would handle lasciviously if at all. But Coppola presents it matter-of-factly, as a character trait that lets us know what's she's thinking.

The acting in "VS" is great. Sure, Dunst has the showiest part among the girls, but all of them do memorable work, differentiating themselves from each other in small ways. Therese in particular is complex and intriguing; during a party scene she seems simultaneously bored and entranced; yet during the Prom sequence, she's the only one who dares to declare, "I'm having the best time!"

Josh Hartnett is Trip Fontaine, the B.M.O.C. who ardently pursues, deflowers, and rapidly abandons Lux (all while wearing an obvious wig). He actually shows more vulnerability than any of the Lisbon girls do. This vulnerability is key considering his final actions. Trip Fontaine is also played by Michael Pare - remember "Streets of Fire"? "Eddie and the Cruisers"? - in brief scenes as an adult. He's less vulnerable and more wistful, and his mind, still a teenager.

Kathleen Turner, a long - long - way from "Body Heat", is the ultimate controlling mother, who insists she's just raising her girls well. Characters like hers are usually played for camp value, but Turner is stern and scary the way a real parent can be.

But the trophy goes to James Woods as Mr. Lisbon, the doormat father. He plays against type big-time and far exceeds the novelty it. Hardly a patriarch, his performance turns Mr. Lisbon - also the school science teacher - into the glue holding the family together and failing. It's really moving the way the film juxtaposes the different aspects of his character's personality. On one hand, there's a recurring gag in which people walk away from him while he's talking about science or history or something, and he doesn't seem to mind. On the other, he's the one who quietly, nobly pulls Cecelia off the wrought iron fence after she's fallen to her death, the look on his face and the tension in his arms belying the importance of the act; the one who lobbies Turner to let the remaining daughters go to the Prom, since he'll be a chaperone; and the one who quietly stands up to a group of protesting mortuary workers, to let them through and bury their daughter (the camera stays in the hearse and just lets us see his body language, his middle-class milquetoast just effortlessly commanding almost a dozen angry blue collar dudes). Its really amazing stuff, and at times I actually had to remind myself he's the guy from "Salvador" and "Cop". At the Independent Spirit Awards following the year "VS" came out, Woods not-so-good-naturedly ribbed the organization for not nominating him. Ego aside, he was right. His work here is The Goods.

As good as many of the performances are, some of the casting doesn't work. Danny DeVito and Scott Glenn show up in cameos. Their presence is understandable, since each appeared in one of Francis Ford Coppola's films. And maybe the ability to put them in the trailer was the difference between a green light and turnaround. But DeVito's one scene (it might be just one shot) appearance as a psychiatrist, could have been played by any middle-aged guy. And while the idea of Scott Glenn as a priest is an interesting, unconventional choice, Scott Glenn as an Irish priest is not. The guy looks like he's from Montana, and he has to walk around with this Lucky Charms accent (which fades in and out).

FEATURES

- Behind the Scenes featurette. This is a 23-minute piece mixing on-location interview footage with scenes from the film. Too many scenes from the film. The on-location footage was shot by Eleanor Coppola, who also has shot behind the scenes footage for Apocalypse Now (used in "Hearts of Darkness"), and for her son Roman' Coppola's "CQ". She finds a number of real moments, like James Woods giving a speech to the crew, clearly enjoying his experience on the film, and smitten with Coppola; Roman Coppola shooting second unit stuff to help out his sister; Josh Hartnett sitting with Eugenides, the author of the novel "Virgin Suicides", neither knowing what to say to the other; and the man himself, Francis F., relegated to the catering truck, likely banished from the main set by his daughter.

- "Playground Love" music video. Co-Directed by Roman and Sofia, this is a clever movie-footage tie-in clip for Air's main theme for the movie, with a singing piece of gum connecting scenes throughout the film.

- Trailer. A good piece, despite the fact that it abandons the film's unique techno score halfway through.

- Photo Gallery. A montage of behind-the-scenes photos, set to the piano version of "Playground Love". This cannot be paused and must be watched all the way through once played. This is not likeable.

"VS" was shot by veteran cinematographer Ed Lachman in 1.85:1. Lachman is the most chameleonic of name D.P.s, (He's also shot "Far From Heaven", David Byrne's "True Stories" and Werner Herzog's "Stroszek") and with Coppola achieves a natural-lighting look that perfectly conveys a remembered suburbia.

The sound here is English and French, both 5.1. Ambience is aided by lots of neighborhood noise.

While there's plenty of 70s music here, the musical score by Air steals the movie. The electronic sound juxtaposed with the 70s look is very evocative. We tend to think of techno as belonging to clubs and car commercials, but here it runs the gamut from foreboding to dreamy to sympathetic, drawing us further into the film.

The end of a review is a fine place to mention the final shot of a movie. The final shot of "The Virgin Suicides" has all four of our collective narrators standing across the street from the old Lisbon house the morning after the Asphyxiation Party. They look tired and in the thrall of their first hangover. One of them raises a cigarette lighter (again, likely his first) in tribute to these girls he loved but never knew, and the camera does something subtly amazing: at a forty-five degree angle from the left, it tracks away from them until they seemingly vanish into the architecture of upper-class suburban streets, trees, and houses. This final image completes their journey and firmly establishes Sofia Coppola as a unique, confident voice in contemporary filmmaking.