Content warning: This article contains mention of suicide.
I watched “The Virgin Suicides” twenty-five years after its release, and after speaking to a few friends, it’s clear that director Sofia Coppola’s stylistic choices may not be fully grasped by a modern audience. It is a shocking and polarizing movie — one that some see as fetishizing girls as well as mental illness.
“The Virgin Suicides” follows the mysterious life of the Lisbon girls: Bonnie, Mary, Lux, Therese and Cecilia. The girls are blonde with soft features, generally not speaking unless spoken to. The film develops the tale of these sisters through the perspective of the boys living across the street, who become increasingly mystified by the peculiarity of the Lisbon family, especially when the daughters commit suicide one by one.
Cinematically speaking, I found the film to be extraordinary from its outset. The camera transforms the drab suburban neighborhood where the Lisbon girls live into a stunning portrayal of daily life. The textures and colors in the girls’ bedrooms are ornate and soft, just like them.
Shots of the daughters draped over each other in bed, reading, staring out of the window, or waiting for a phone call are all intimate portrayals that made my viewing experience all the more immersive.
Beyond the visual elements of the film, the male narration is an interesting, yet vital plot device employed to construe the message of the film. The takeaway I got from “The Virgin Suicides” was that men, or boys in this case, prefer to mythologize women and project their fantasies onto them rather than taking the time to understand or help them.
On multiple occasions, the boys across the street communicate in Morse code with the sisters through flashing lights in their front windows. The girls respond with flashing and postcard messages that essentially say “help us,” as their parents lock them in their house after Cecilia is the first sister to commit suicide, suggesting disturbing events may lie beneath the surface.
While it would be easy for the boys to help the girls by calling social services or getting their parents involved, they rummage around trash trying to understand how the sisters spend their days cooped up at home, notably gawking through binoculars at Lux making out with boys on her roof.
This film is particularly resonant for adult women, as we are able to recognize a bit of ourselves within the angst of the Lisbon sisters and through the misogyny they experience through the male gaze that is conveyed in the film.
Coppola exhibits how young girls vie for male attention as a form of escapism, exuding a great sense of vulnerability, which influences the boys’ shallow and exploitative interest in them.
It can be easy to come away from “The Virgin Suicides” shocked by depictions of suicide or the superficial portrayal of the girls. Coppola, having been a young woman herself, undoubtedly subverts the male gaze to criticize viewing women as spectacles rather than people who may experience complex situations and are in need of aid — a perspective I urge all viewers to consider when watching this film.
