920 The Virgin Suicides

[domino harvey]

The Virgin Suicides



With this debut feature, Sofia Coppola announced her singular vision, which explores the aesthetics of femininity while illuminating the interior lives of young women. A faithful adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides's popular 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 boys who yearn to understand what happened. Evoking its 1970s suburban setting through ethereal cinematography by Ed Lachman and an atmospheric score by Air, the film secured a place for its director in the landscape of American independent cinema and has become a coming-of-age touchstone.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION:

• New 4K digital restoration, approved by director Sofia Coppola and supervised by cinematographer Ed Lachman, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the 4K UHD and Blu-ray
• Interviews with Coppola, 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 and Francis Ford Coppola; actors Dunst, Hartnett, Scott Glenn, Kathleen Turner, and James Woods; Eugenides; and others
• Lick the Star, a 1998 short film by Sofia Coppola
• Music video for Air's soundtrack song "Playground Love," directed by Coppola and her brother Roman Coppola
• Trailers
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by novelist Megan Abbott

[mfunk9786]

Paramount is so weird. They move out all these award bait films that no one even remembers anymore and let something that might look gorgeous in Blu-ray like Virgin Suicides go OOP. Makes sense to me!

I have to agree, but let's face it, this is going to move a lot more copies than Virgin Suicides ever would on Blu-ray, and the Sapphire Series banner seems to move titles on the strength of... well, who the hell knows what the strength of that banner is.

[Matt]

Virgin Suicides might get released on Blu-ray as a tie-in to the release (theatrical or home video) of Somewhere. At least I'll remain optimistic that it will. But didn't it go OOP because it's part of the American Zoetrope library that is now being handled by Lionsgate?

[AquaNarc]

At around 9:15 in this interview with David Poland, Coppola mentions that she is working with Criterion on a Virgin Suicides release

[Luke M]

I’m excited to revisit this film. I remember enjoying it a great deal.

[swo17]

Apr 24

[Ribs]

... Tavi Gevinson?

[Boosmahn]

A faithful adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides’s popular first novel,...

Isn't there a slight departure between the two? I've heard that while the film focuses more on the girls themselves, the book is more mystery-centric and tends to spend more time with the group of boys. Can anyone comment on this?

[Rupert Pupkin]

A faithful adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides’s popular first novel,...

Isn't there a slight departure between the two? I've heard that while the film focuses more on the girls themselves, the book is more mystery-centric and tends to spend more time with the group of boys. Can anyone comment on this?

Giovanni Ribisi should have got an Oscar nomination for the narration of the movie and I'm a bit disappointing that he does not appear in an audio commentary (although I remember that there are some funny stories by Sofia Coppola such as Josh Harnett wig). Giovanni really added a bitterness, almost desperate tone to the movie...
so that it could even matched the last poem from Nicolas Roeg's "Walkabout":

"Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again."

At that point the boys are to the verge of "Suicide" too - still alive, adult but away from their life. There's no turning back.
Remember the scene (it's not explicit) where Josh Hartnett character, now in a psychiatric hospital seems totally under the charmed of Lux now. It was also smart for Sofia Coppola that she casts another "pretty face" from the 80's to play this character in that scene (Michael Paré - the John Wayne of the 80's (remember Streets Of Fire ?)

Thus, IMHO, Sofia (I think that she was helped by her father for the script) added another point of view : which makes now, in comparison to the book, makes this movie much more from the boys point of view - it kind of reminds me "Picnic at Hanging-Rock"... So, I have the feeling that Sofia Coppola leads 2 points of view (not antagonist) : the young girls, and the boys now became adult and still haunted and hooked by the past and this girl... Not because of the trauma, but they seem to have reached the same pre-nostalgia "syndrome" than the "virgin suicides" (but not because of religious, but job, routine, discovering what adult life is). That's what I found different from the novel, and makes the religious oppression more explicit in Picnic at Hanging-rock than in Virgin Suicide (for instance James Woods character looks more "lost" than oppressive...)

While this is not my favorite S.Coppola movie (Lost In Translation and Marie Antoinette), it totally hooked me when I discovered Kirsten Dunst with this movie (I remember going into theatrical release to see her in Spiderman just because of this movie and rented all the movies she did at that time (and there was some masterpieces :-# ).
One great thing - but because of (c) rights that would not have been possible - would have been to have an isolated soundtrack just like the Twilight Time release: because the AIR soundtrack is fantastic (not mentioning for instance "Magic Man" by Heart). AIR disappointed me later, but at that time that was awesome like rock-prog bubble-gum ("Playground Love" was an amazing number) and a Criterion bonus featuring their live premiered of the soundtrack in the "Morning becomes eclectic/Le matin devient éclectique" would have been an awesome bonus.

I'm happy that they included "Playground Love" clip since it contains movie outtakes in the classroom
basically it seems that there is all the bonus of the DVD Pathé release and the Blu-Ray Pathé release (the short movie).

speaking of video-clips in order to be completist, they could have added Sofia Coppola's black & white video clip of "I Don't Know What To Do With Myself". That would have been a very nice "welcoming" to Kate Moss doing a lap dance sequence in gorgeous black and white in the Criterion collection.

Fortunately the X4 transfer will be an improvement over the Blu-Ray Pathé which was an old scan with a kind of "voile"/moiré artefacts over the screen - which really doesn't belong to the original photography.

I would have loved the outtakes of the 8mm imaginary "home holiday movies" of Lux and her sisters...

[barryconvex]

..Michael Paré - the John Wayne of the 80's..

i think i'd vote for Nick Nolte. I can see Wayne in his part from 48 Hours.

[goblinfootballs]

Isn't the orginal aspect ratio 1.85:1? Criterion lists it as 1.66:1.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Could be a mistake, or it could be that Coppola prefers 1.66:1 (which she just used for The Beguiled) but protected it for the more common 1.85:1. If you believe some reviews online, the UK DVD was 1.66:1.

[djproject]

I'm leaning that this is the director's preferred AR, given that Ed Lachman supervised the transfer and Sofia approved it.

In a strange way, it's quite appropriate as it does look closer to a typical non-professional photograph from that time (the smallest whole number ratio is 5:3).

[richast2]

Coppola wrote an article for the Guardian about making The Virgin Suicides.

[djproject]

Beaver or "couldn't think of a clever word/title play"

[stevewhamola]

The VirGary Toozicides

[kcota17]

Whoa, not to be that guy.. but that shot of Kirsten Dunst lying down is insanely blue compared to the previous DVDs. I’m so used to the shot looking like the DVDs, this is going to be weird.

[Kirkinson]

Yeah, the color scheme seems to have changed substantially. That shot in the tree looks like a completely different movie. I think of this as a very "blue" movie so the overall shift toward green could take some getting used to. (I know kcota17 just complained about a shot looking bluer, but since it previously had a little more magenta, that's consistent with a greenward shift.) Lachmann and Coppola both signed off on this so I guess that's the final word, but it's pretty surprising.

[Lost Highway]

Some shots look warmer others cooler, so at least it looks like it’s been considered shot for shot. I can understand people being attached to the was it looked on DVD, but I think this looks quite beautiful.

[djproject]

The VirGary Toozicides

I was also thinking of going for the obvious and using: The Beaver Suicides.

===

As for the colour scheme, it was a bit of a shock (and I hadn't seen it in a long time) but I'm sure it's something where it would make sense in motion as well as seeing it as a whole, given what the story ultimately is. While I know having the director/DP overseeing this has been at times questionable (see The Last Emperor for instance), I still have to take their word on how the film should look since the chances are very likely neither Sofia nor Lachman oversaw the initial digital mastering back in 2000 or so. The only way to really corroborate is to look at what the prints were like back in 1999.

[Minkin]

The Virgin Svet-icides

[CSM126]

It just feels absolutely perfect for the desired by Coppola and veteran cinematographer Ed Lachman surreal ambience.

This man’s sentence structure is so appalling I almost have to believe he’s writing in another language and then translating through babelfish. Does bluray.com not have a basic editor?

Also: what high praise! This movie is so dull you’ll feel like your asleep! Four stars!

(How are they not embarrassed to publish this guy?)

[aox]

For various reasons (it doesn't help that outside of Lost in Translation, I am not too enamored by S. Coppola's work), I have still not seen this film. However, I have seen Ergüven's Mustang from a few years ago. I've been told they are very similar movies. Have any of you seen both and can offer a comparison between the two and which (or how both) handles the material better or worse?

[dda1996a]

They are only similar as far as that they are both about a group of sisters living under strict rules (and religion plays a role in both films).
But as far as I remember they are really different. Mustang is far more about the girls' place in a male dominated, patriarchal Muslim environment as seen through the youngest sister. Virgin Suicides is more about how the girls are seen through the boys who worship them. At its basis I can see the similarities but I found them completely different. I think the era and nationality of the films affect them even more so, Mustang with its particular milieu that's rarely seen while Suicides is a much more nostalgic, poetic look back at your youth.
Except for this, I'm not really a fan of anything else Coppola made except for Lost in Translation, but I liked both films so I'll just watch them, maybe you'll get even more watching them back to back

[Lost Highway]

I didn’t like Mustang very much. To hammer home the notion of how repressive the environment they grow up in is, the girls naively keep behaving in ways as if they aren’t familiar with the rules of their society and religion. No doubt in reality they would hear about how they are expected to conduct themselves from the moment they can comprehend. I feel it got applauded more for its intentions than its execution. I think The Virgin Suicides was a promising debut rather than a great film but it’s a way more accomplished film than Mustang. I think Coppola‘s best film is the criminally underrated Marie Antoinette.