The Virgin Suicides

The Virgin Suicides

Directed by Sofia Coppola • 1999 • United States
Starring Kirsten Dunst, Kathleen Turner, James Woods

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 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 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, the film secured a place for its director in the landscape of American independent cinema and has become a coming-of-age touchstone.

The Virgin Suicides
  • The Virgin Suicides

    Directed by Sofia Coppola • 1999 • United States
    Starring Kirsten Dunst, Kathleen Turner, James Woods

    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 Eugeni...

Extras

  • Revisiting THE VIRGIN SUICIDES

    The following program featuring director Sofia Coppola, actors Kirsten Dunst and Josh Hartnett, and cinematographer Ed Lachman was produced in 2018.

  • Jeffrey Eugenides on THE VIRGIN SUICIDES

    “The Virgin Suicides” was Jeffrey Eugenides’s debut novel, and Sofia Coppola adapted it to the screen for her debut feature film. In the following interview, produced in 2018, Eugenides talks about his inspiration for the book, being on set during the film’s production, and what Coppola brought t...

  • Making of THE VIRGIN SUICIDES

    While Sofia Coppola directed her first feature, her mother, the artist and filmmaker Eleanor Coppola, was there to document the experience. Presented here, that making-of video features interviews with both Sofia and Eleanor; actors Kirsten Dunst, Scott Glenn, Josh Hartnett, Kathleen Turner, and ...

  • Strange Magic

    In the following program, produced in 2018, writer and Rookie editor in chief Tavi Gevinson explores THE VIRGIN SUICIDES through the lens of adolescence, suicide, and memory. It features Gevinson’s own writing and imagery from a fanzine she made about Sofia Coppola’s movie in 2012.

  • Lick the Star

    Directed by Sofia Coppola • 1998 • United States

    Sofia Coppola made the following 16 mm short film in 1998, the same year she began production on THE VIRGIN SUICIDES.

  • Playground Love

    Sofia Coppola commissioned Air to score THE VIRGIN SUICIDES. This video for “Playground Love,” one of the songs the band wrote for the film, was directed by Coppola and her brother Roman Coppola.