The Virgin Suicides

The wistful melancholy that suffused Jeffrey Eugenides’s debut novel is perfectly captured and expanded upon in Sofia Coppola’s first feature, giving it a hazy, dreamlike air that stays with the viewer long after the final notes of Air’s superb score have faded.

In 1970s Michigan, the enigmatic Lisbon sisters endure a claustrophobically strict upbringing by their parents (Kathleen Turner, James Woods) while captivating the neighbourhood’s young men, who long for them from a distance. Following the suicide of the youngest daughter, their parents’ grief leads them to become even more oppressively watchful and protective. Some light gets in when Lux (Kirsten Dunst) begins a brief relationship with Trip (Josh Hartnett), but when she is seduced and abandoned by him, the girls’ lives further unravel, while the haunted boys who love them must look on, helpless.