With this debut feature, Sofia Coppola announced her singular vision, exploring the aesthetics of femininity while illuminating the interior lives of young women. An adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides’s highly acclaimed first novel, The Virgin Suicides conjures the ineffable melancholy of teenage longing and ennui in its story of the suicides of the five Lisbon sisters, stifled by the rules of their overprotective religious parents—as told through the collective memory of a group of men who were boys at the time and still yearn to understand what happened. Evoking its 1970s suburban setting through ethereal cinematography by Ed Lachman and an atmospheric score by Air, and featuring a magnetic performance by Kirsten Dunst, the film secured a place for its director in the landscape of American independent cinema and has become a coming-of-age touchstone.
Technical Specifications
Supplements
- Interviews with Sofia Coppola, Ed Lachman, actors Kirsten Dunst and Josh Hartnett, novelist Jeffrey Eugenides, and writer and actor Tavi Gevinson
- Making of “The Virgin Suicides,” a 1998 documentary directed by Eleanor Coppola and featuring Sofia Coppola; Eleanor Coppola and Francis Ford Coppola; actors Kirsten Dunst, Josh Hartnett, Scott Glenn, Kathleen Turner, and James Woods; Jeffrey Eugenides; and more
- Lick the Star, a 1998 short film by Coppola
- Music video for Air’s soundtrack song “Playground Love,” directed by Coppola and her brother Roman Coppola
- Trailers
- An essay by novelist Megan Abbott