Cady's Take:

On the surface the Lisbons appear to be a healthy, successful family living in a middle-class Michigan suburb. James Woods plays dad, a physics teacher at the local high school, and Kathleen Turner as the uncommonly strict mother. After 13-year old Cecilia, the youngest, commits suicide, after a failed attempt earlier in the film, the family spirals downward into a creepy state of isolation as the remaining girls are cut off from social interaction. Reminiscent of 1987's Flowers in the Attic, the children are forced to fantasize through travel guides, imagining a different life in faraway lands. With every avenue of self-expression cut off, the girls suffocate in their misery and cry out for help to the boys in the neighborhood.

The movie's greatest strength is it's mysterious plot that leaves you questioning well after it's over. You don't know any more about the Lisbon girls coming out than you did going in, but you desperately want to...and the resonance they leave is impossible to forget. All the passion, curiosity and outrageous dreams of youth are here.

The film is stylish and unarguably thought provoking. One really obtains a firm grasp on perhaps the movie's underlying meaning when Cecilia is asked in the first minutes of the film why she attempted to commit suicide by her psychiatrist (Danny DeVito), "Well Doctor, I guess you've never been a thirteen year old girl."

The great thing about “The Virgin Suicides” is that, although you clearly know what is going to happen, the movie keeps you riveted from start to finish. Sophia Coppola’s first film is a triumph of adolescent angst, and is played in a minor note. The Lisbon girls are beautiful and perfect, and the neighborhood boys are enchanted with them. Mr. Lisbon (James Woods) is overly concerned with keeping his daughters safe, and Mrs. Lisbon (Kathleen Turner) is a hysterical mother, obsessed with maintaining her daughters’ purity. Although we might be horrified at their overly protective behavior, it really is not the Lisbons that drive their daughters to suicide. It is life, reality, the realization that “this is as good as it gets.”

The story focuses on the relationship between Lux Lisbon (Kirsten Dunst) and the local cute guy, Trip (Josh Hartnett). Lux and Trip consummate their relationship on the football field the night of the school dance, and when Lux wakes up alone she does not seem entirely surprised. Sad, yes, but not surprised. “The Virgin Suicides” explores the loss of innocence without exploiting it and I think the film makes a wonderful point by remaining understated. It is the girls’ quiet struggle, their inner struggle, that moves the plot along and I found myself completely enthralled, waiting to see what happens next.

I think this is a wonderful movie, and in spite of its “R” rating, suitable for teenagers to watch; perhaps necessary to watch. Anyone who has ever felt like no one understood them will understand “The Virgin Suicides.”