VIRGIN SUICIDES (1999)

I always always wanted to see this movie. Never got the chance, until I asked my friend to look for the download link (I put the link somewhere in this review). Thanks for him, I finally can enjoy the movie. The moment I want to see the movie is when Kirsten Dunst was a new hottie in Hollywood. A year before Bring It On hit the theaters. Other part is Josh Hartnett (I was a teenager then). But I may have never appreciate the movie back then, like now.

The movie is about the suicides of five Lisbon sisters in the suburb of Detroit during the 1970s. Their suicides fascinate the community as their neighbors struggle to find the explanation for the acts. Directed by Sofia Coppola, it was based on the novel of the same name by Jeffrey Eugenides.

If you heard the word 'suicide', your immediate link to it must have not far from desperation and darkness. But from the beginning the movie just felt breezy, light and dreamy. It got the same air or same atmosphere like Lost in Translation, of course it's Sofia Coppola's taste. Not until I saw the end, the movie haunts me and made me thinking the movie can get more vulgar but perhaps Coppola's choosing not to put it all, just to make the movie more enjoyable. Probably because I think the movie is for teenagers to see. There's still shots for us to understand it's a suicide act, but thankfully it is not that much.

Without saying much and more in visual, the movie explains the life of young girls at the time. Lisbon sisters looked gorgeous effortlessly but yet so unreachable. They have some how being innocent but a lot to know about boys. Unless ofcourse Lux, played by Kirsten Dunst. She manage to be irresistable cute to desperate. Somehow I didn't get why the youngest girls, Cecilia, decide to kill herself.

It's hard being a girl at that young age. You want to explore a lot but your parents wants the best for you, that includes giving you strict rules. Yes, the parents of the Lisbon sisters choose the hard way to prevent them to walk outside the lines. But it seem like they have punish them for being a human and attractive young girls. Sometimes the girl who gets the punishment, but the truth is there's more question to be ask for the guys.

The song 'Playground Love' blends and catches the atmosphere perfectly. I've heard the song before I saw the movie, one of Phoenix's cover. Mars helped the making of the movie's soundtrack. By that time, I didn't get what so great about it. I guess you must have watch the movie first.

Trivia :

• Coppola won Best New Filmmaker in MTV Movie Award for making this movie.
• After she had written the script, Sofia Coppola was heartbroken to discover that another company was already producing an adaptation of the book themselves. However, they were not happy with their script, so she showed them hers and they ended up using it instead.
• Thurston Moore of the band Sonic Youth originally gave the book to Sofia Coppola. After reading it she decided to make it into a movie.