Trigger Warning (TW): This review piece discusses sensitive themes, including suicide, depression, adolescent isolation, and grief. Reader and viewer discretion is kindly advised.
Sofia Coppola’s cult adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides’s 1993 novel, The Virgin Suicides, remains a hauntingly beautiful mess open to interpretation even after twenty-five years. Despite attempts to put the pieces together to answer the questions posed by the characters, the reasons behind their deaths retain an air of mystery around them.
The Virgin Suicides follows the Lisbon sisters—Therese, Mary, Bonnie, Lux, and Cecilia—who live in a repressive, suburban home. After Cecilia’s suicide, their isolation intensifies, mirroring the neighbourhood boys’ struggle to piece together their complex lives like a puzzle. Each missing piece symbolises the unanswerable questions surrounding the sisters’ experiences, culminating in a haunting exploration of adolescent despair.
After my second viewing at the Sydney Opera House Playhouse, I was struck by how deeply I resonated with this puzzle analogy. It echoes life’s subtle ironies and uncertainties that are left behind after a death. I felt that same unshakable response to death when I was 15, watching it for the first time. Seated in the centre of the theatre, I noticed many teenagers around me, reflecting various ages and stages of adolescence.
This sight made me think of my peers who lost their rites of passage during the Coronavirus crisis — moments spent at birthday parties, school dances, and hugging loved ones — all stolen from us.
For many teenagers, the “me against the world” mentality is palpable as the sisters endure a suffocating environment where adults—parents, teachers, and students—talk about their struggles but ultimately do nothing to help. Coppola illustrates the facade of normalcy for those outside the Lisbon household. Yet, through brief anecdotes and fragmented clues, we, like the Lisbon girls, have more questions than answers.
As we carry the weight of the world, the pressure to act as if everything is fine mirrors the never-ending labyrinth of suffering among the Lisbon sisters. Like them, we were trapped in a bubble of suspended time, where our youth was defined by the intangible boundaries of lockdowns and fear.
It was hard not to think about today’s teens while watching the five Lisbon sisters — Therese (seventeen), Mary (sixteen), Bonnie (fifteen), Lux (fourteen), and Cecilia (thirteen) — grieve the innocence of their inexperience, trapped in a suffocating world. The world outside our windows felt as distant and unreachable as the one outside the Lisbon sisters’ home.
In Coppola’s film, grief is portrayed as a conflict between the desire to live and the wish to die, creating a dreamlike atmosphere that serves as a haunting reminder of unfulfilled potential.
The Lisbon girls each had unique artistic potential: Cecilia expressed herself through stream-of-consciousness poetry, Lux embraced rock music, and Therese showcased her passion for science and animal life. In contrast, Bonnie and Mary were more reserved, often shy about fully expressing their talents.
Tense close-ups capture the characters’ emotions, conveying their shattered identities as they navigate the fractured landscape of suburban life. The treatment from their strict parents offers the complex web of confusion and a yearning for escape that many teenagers face today. When the girls are forced to stay inside as punishment, I questioned how to navigate such confinement and find a way out when we all stumble into this maze at some point, carrying the weight of past mistakes and missed opportunities into our adulthood.
Specifically, sixteen-year-old Kirsten Dunst delivers a compelling performance as Lux, embodying a meticulous, lyrical quality that feels like a love letter to youthful desire. In contrast, nineteen-year-old Josh Hartnett portrays Trip Fontaine with a detached, almost emasculated presence, highlighting the romantic idealism of teenage masculinity. The girl’s imprisonment stems from Lux spending the night with Trip, illustrating how teenagers often feel misunderstood and disrespected in their choices and autonomy…
“We’re suffocating,” Lux tells her mother in a key moment near the end.
“You’re safe here,” her mother replies.
“I can’t breathe in here,” Lux responds.
I now see the heart and fear in Coppola’s work, especially the difficult questions society faces—questions that lead to confrontations we aren’t prepared for.
Through her visual choices, Coppola displays a chameleonic style in her set designs, using soft pastel colours such as pink, lavender, and baby blue to depict suffering in a hidden and contained manner. The sadness and boredom of the girls are dressed in a refined palette, yet they hint at darker undertones, suggesting that something terrible is looming—the girls’ deaths. As the characters confront the inevitability of their fate, their pain leaves us with a growing sense of exasperation, adding to the story’s emotional weight.
Throughout the screening, a powerful sense of feminine pain filled the room. The plight of the Lisbon girls saddened me; their struggles resonate as a haunting reminder of the pain and emptiness that stays in the aftermath of such loss.
As the final scenes flickered on the screen, I could feel a collective intake of breath from the audience. People shifted in their seats, their body language revealing deep engagement with the story. A few rows ahead, someone wiped away a tear, while others sat silently, absorbing the heavy weight of the film’s last moments.
The Virgin Suicides may not be the light-hearted entertainment some prefer today, but it remains a captivating exploration of absence and presence. Like the novel, it provides no easy answers, instead posing open-ended questions that linger in the mind. In my opinion, it remains Coppola’s best film because of its exploration of unfocused grief. Maybe the parents could have tried harder, or the boys could have confronted the girls. Perhaps if the neighbours had spoken up, things might have changed. These aren’t shocking revelations, but thoughts about their quiet suburban life that will remain a fog of uncertainty, tucked away in their white picket home, long after the credits roll.
Sofia Coppola’s film explores themes of adolescent despair, isolation, and societal neglect through the tragic lives of the Lisbon sisters. The film captures their struggle against a suffocating suburban environment, reflecting on grief and the complexities of teenage identity. With haunting visuals and a dreamlike atmosphere, it poses open-ended questions about loss, the roles of family and community, and the longing for freedom, inviting viewers to grapple with these uncertainties even 25 years later.
Screening:
Venue: Sydney Opera House, Playhouse
Date: Saturday 12th October 2024
Time: 5:15 pm
Film: MA+15
Ticket: Concession was $26 with $8.95 booking fee per transaction