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Review: 'Virgin Suicides' an unconsummated tale
(CNN) -- Any critic reviewing Sofia Coppola's bizarrely superficial debut film, "The Virgin Suicides," is obligated to mention her famous father, director Francis Ford Coppola. It's no trade secret that he's the mastermind behind "The Godfather," (1972) "The Conversation," (1974) "The Godfather Part II" (1974) and "Apocalypse Now," (1979) four films touched by true genius. But the rest of the elder Coppola's output is erratic at best. Even visionary directors can screw up in a big way, so Sofia shouldn't be expected to enter rare air with her first effort. However, she should have determined what point she wanted to make with "The Virgin Suicides"' lachrymose tale of mid-'70s teen woe, beyond the three-ring-binder-ready accusation that grownups are mean. Real, real mean. If you were to guess who Sofia's parents are solely on the evidence of this movie, you might surmise that she's the offspring of David Lynch and adolescent angst novelist Judy Blume. Strong props, weak scriptBased on Jeffrey Eugenides' critically acclaimed book, "The Virgin Suicides" is a teen movie disguised as a sensuous examination of whatever the hell it is that Coppola thinks she's examining. She's certainly gotten the small stuff right. Her camera lingers on the tacky end tables, ruffled curtains and hairsprayed coifs that, by now, serve as shorthand for the emptiness of suburban existence. Unfortunately, Coppola thinks she can write a screenplay in shorthand, too. And she fails miserably for the miscalculation. Her production team must have ransacked every Goodwill store in the greater Los Angeles area to create "The Virgin Suicides"' detailed sets, but found objects are no replacement for a coherent theme. Props should serve as directorial adjuncts that illuminate the script's central concept. They help pull the audience into a world that should then be dissected through astute dialogue and characterizations. Good girl goes badThere are no less than five beautiful, morose sisters floating through "The Virgin Suicides," but the first hour seems more like a never-ending setup than an unfolding story. Things start promisingly, with an inventive prologue during which the youngest of the sisters attempts to take her own life. Then Coppola gets down to examining the vulgar setting and neglects to do anything else for most of the movie. Kirsten Dunst, as a passive-seductive high schooler named Lux Lisbon, is the focus of attention, but she barely utters a full sentence of dialogue until midway through the second act. And when she finally starts talking, the character is woefully bereft of insight. She's an unattainable dream girl who wreaks havoc on the neighborhood by behaving herself, then deftly shifts the story into tragedy when she decides to be very, very bad. Lux and her enigmatic sisters, Cecilia (Hanna Hall), Therese (Leslie Hayman), Mary (A.J. Cook) and Bonnie (Chelse Swain), have goosed the local schoolboys into hormonal tizzies. But only Lux seems aware of her blossoming allure, and she capitalizes on it with come-hither glances and nonchalantly applied skin-to-skin contact.
Unbelievable conclusionThough the narrator (voiced by Giovanni Ribisi) supplies a few middling insights, the adults in the story are virtual cretins. James Woods plays the girls' math-teacher father, and it's nice to see him in a non-slimeball role. But Mr. Lisbon and his desperately dimwitted wife (Kathleen Turner) barely resemble human life forms.
Time-lapse inserts of rolling clouds and a succession of memorable pop tunes from the period can't disguise the fact that the screenplay is getting nowhere fast. And Coppola doesn't allow enough interaction between the family members to create a believable setting for the operatic breakdown that ends the film. A large stretch of the story is taken up with a dead-end romance between Lux and Trip Fontaine (Josh Hartnett), the school's pot-smoking hunk. God (and Coppola) only knows what we're supposed to get out of the couple's supercharged flirting and necking, except that that's the kind of thing that high school kids do. Duh, as they say.
At times, the actors (especially Dunst and Hartnett) manage to flesh out the flimsy material, and Coppola shows occasional flashes of genuine gallows humor. But what we have here is a less-than-provocative concept that simply isn't worth 100 minutes of screen time. The movie isn't an embarrassment, but Coppola has inadvertently highlighted the difference between childlike and childish. The next step in her evolution as a director should be a film strip on the miracle of having your first period. "The Virgin Suicides," not surprisingly, contains a handful of suicides. They're not especially gruesome, but that doesn't make them any less disturbing. There are also a few instances of fumbling sex, but no nudity. Don't skip school to see it. Rated R. 96 minutes. RELATED STORIES: Cult classic 'Virgin Suicides' moves to the big screen RELATED SITE: 'The Virgin Suicides' |
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