The Virgin Suicides

Directed by Sofia Coppola

In the cinematic world, there are two visions of American suburbia. The first belongs to Michael J Fox and Molly Ringwald - it is the apple-pie realization of the American dream. The second is a subversion of the first. In her first full-length feature, Sofia Coppola, daughter of writer/director Francis Ford Coppola, taps this rich vein of suburban decay. It is a bold choice for a young filmmaker, and despite a wealth of good material, she can't help showing her age.

Based on the book by Jeffery Eugenides' The Virgin Suicides tells the story of the Lisbon sisters, five beautiful girls-next-door. The girls are presented - through the eyes and narration of the neighbourhood boys who revere them - as slow motion visions of adolescent female perfection. Yet before we are introduced to them in a Good-the-Bad-and-the-Ugly-style stop-frame lineup we are told of their forthcoming suicides.

Veteran performances from Kathleen Turner and James Woods as the Lisbon parents add a touch of class to proceedings, tempering a talented young cast (Kirsten Dunst is excellent as the sexually precocious Lux). Scott Glen and Danny DeVito cameo. An original soundtrack by Air enervates the entire film. Its pallid horns and soporific rhythms complement the drawn, bleached images and empty lives. It is beautiful. Coppola clearly knows the right people in the industry.

Her downfall, however, is her inability to expand on good ideas and sustain them throughout the entire film. After Cecilia impales herself on the garden fence it is removed with great ceremony. Later the council chops down the huge elms on the Lisbon's front lawn. This piecemeal removal of the fixtures of their lives could have been a powerful visual metaphor for the Lisbon's gradually decaying lives, but having set it up Coppola never really returns to it.

Similarly, she seems at one point to be examining the nature of adolescent relationships, and sets the sexes apart beautifully, showing the boys in eager, fresh-faced huddles while the girls sprawl languidly on bedroom floors. The trappings of gender are there as well - popcorn and telescopes for the boys, lipstick and eyelash curlers for the girls. When Peter enters Cecilia's room it is an alien world to be feared and explored. Yet just as we begin to understand something of what Coppola is doing, she changes tack to examine parental relationships, or the way we live through our dreams. She has so many ideas, and so much to say, that she never seems to know in which direction to push. Even the cinematography is uncertain, shifting aimlessly through the spectrum of colours.

Peppered with good ideas, Virgin Suicides is an archetypal first feature. It is a hallmark of maturity in a director to have the confidence to allow a single overarching theme to guide a film. It gives the audience time to understand, and to become involved in what the filmmaker is trying to say. In the Virgin Suicides, we are left rather out in the cold.

Harry Smith, 17 / 5 / 00