Sofia Coppola‘s striking debut feature “The Virgin Suicides,” was a type of cotillion in its day: an coming out announcement signaling the arrival of a remarkable new feminine voice in cinema, and a new auteur that was here to stay. The daughter of the legendary Francis Ford Coppola, the young Sofia, then 28-years-old, may have had filmmaking in her blood, traveling on film sets all her life, but with “The Virgin Suicides,” it was clear her singular vision was already full-formed and completely unique.
An adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides’ celebrated 1993 novel of the same name, it’s fascinating to revisit “The Virgin Suicides” today. Ones recollection of the film is its girly, teenage sensibilities, it’s cliché-free, refreshing take on the 1970s, its dreamy visuals, the pillowy musical score (the retro-futurist rock group Air) and au courant coolness. But “The Virgin Suicides,” is perhaps different than you remembered it, it’s a tale about boys, looking at girls, their infatuation and their longing to discover these fantasy creatures. ‘Suicides’ is even told from the perspective of the boys, Giovanni Ribisi narrates the film from the point of view of one of the boys grown up, reflecting back on he and his friend’s youthful obsession with the near-famous Lisbon sisters. The movie is fantasy, a distant memory and something of a detective story—these boys trying to piece together the collage of what makes up these mysterious creatures.
And yet, with all the male adolescence at the center of the movie, Coppola subverts the novel—told from the POV of the boys—and creates a gorgeous and mysterious portrait of girlhood, teenage angst and the complexities of feminine desire. It also features the arresting performance from Kristen Dunst. She may have already found a breakthrough performance and media attention with “Interview with the Vampire” at a young age, but ‘Virgin Suicides’ revealed an entirely new layer of a captivating actress and debutante soon to be on the cusp of womanhood.
“The Virgin Suicides,” with its gauzy, pastel visuals by cinematographer Ed Lachman, the aforementioned illusory score by Air and its immaculately crafted mis en scene by Coppola, is a modern day classic and has rightfully found its place among the halls of the Criterion Collection. With “Virgin Suicides” out now on the DVD/Blu-Ray boutique label, we spoke to Coppola by phone about her auspicious debut, appearing at Cannes with the picture, being a female filmmaker in a male-dominated industry and much more.
So, it’s been almost 20 years since this came out.
I know, a lifetime. Did you get the DVD from Criterion? Is the documentary my mom made on there? It’s like a behind the scenes that was made at the time.
I did get the Criterion disc, the transfer looks great. And yes, your mom’s doc is on there. It looks like it was shot on VHS!
That sounds about right. Yeah, I know, it’s strange. I was happy that they were able to make my first Criterion DVD, but also because that movie didn’t have a very—not many people saw it when it came and they made this with a lot of care.
So what do you think about the movie now and what’s your recollection of making it?
I have a lot of fond memories of the whole experience, so it was nice to kind of revisit it. It was my first movie and it was like summer in Toronto and we had just a fun group of kids, and there was a lot of kind of enthusiasm, everyone was really gung-ho to help me make my film. It was stressful though. I remember some of our financing fell out the week before and the producers were always worried that we were shooting too much, that we were going to run out of film stock. Because we hadn’t budgeting for less and I was just letting the camera roll in all those sequences of the girls lying around their room. I have really fond memories of working with [cinematographer] Ed Lachman too. We made it for nothing and a lot of heart went into it.
And when you look at the film itself, do you see a different version of yourself? What do you see when you look at it now, 20 years later?
Yeah, it’s hard for me to be objective, but there’s things I had forgot about. I can enjoy it without cringing, which is rare when you look back at old things, and you see, you know, awkwardness.
In rewatching it—I also hadn’t seen it in forever— I’m struck by how it’s told so much from the male perspective. It’s about these boys trying to investigate these girls, it’s their narration throughout, and yet it’s such a feminine film.
Yeah, the approach of it is very girly with the soft-hued photography and the art direction. But really it comes from this idea of teenage girls and how they are. The book is definitely told from the POV of a group of boys. I was trying to keep that, but also keep that because it has a distance to it; it had a little bit of a collage feeling because it’s piecing memories together. But it’s true, I connected with the girly aspect of them and their inner world and I loved the mystique they had and how the boys were so confused by all this femininity and the feminine rituals. And when the first boy sneaks in the house and looks in the medicine cabinet, all that kind of stuff. But I just tried to interpret the feeling of the book and definitely that teenage girl world. I think of the movie as being feminine, but it’s true, it is from the boys’ point of view, imagining them as these kind of ethereal creatures and kind of really going with that.