âObviously, doctor, youâve never been a thirteen-year-old girl.â The most iconic and telling line of the cult-classic film, directed by two-time Golden Globe winner Sofia Coppola. Following its release in 1999, the film adaptation of The Virgin Suicides captures the whimsy and bitter poignancy of Jeffrey Eugenidesâ original novel, crafting a haunting yet charmingly tender reflection on female adolescence.
Despite the harrowing undertones, this film is insightful at its core, allowing the audience a glimpse into the teenage girl experience. As a gritty representation of the complexity of girlhood, riddled with the tangible boredom of middle-class suburbia, The Virgin Suicides is a perfect cult-classic to explore this transformative adolescent experience.
The film exudes a hauntingly dreamlike narrative, following the Lisbon girls through the perspective of the local boys. Itâs through this that the audience is remarkably detached from the girls, their isolation mimicking how inherently misunderstood they are. The film provides an excellent commentary on the mysteries of adolescence and avid isolation bred within that time period. The boysâ obsessions with the girls, yet their desperation to be independent, free from the constraints of their perceptions, itâs a constant struggle Eugenides portrays well, and a theme that only dies with the girls at the end of the tale.
Entrapped in a devout Catholic household, the Lisbon girls are confined by both their heavily religious parents and, more widely, confined by their gender, which breeds their vulnerability. As young women, they have little autonomy. Their self-images are reliant on antithetical needs: disapproving parents who value female purity and immature high school boys who seek to exploit that. These conflicting interests add to the pressures on the young girls and eventually push them to collectively end their lives. Each death is another strike back against the idolised notion of the nuclear family and a final reminder that the narrators (the boys) and the audience will never truly understand the girlsâ experience. The male gaze and patriarchal expectations eroded the girlsâ freedom, making it impossible for them to live authentically. Thus, the suicides of the Lisbon girls act as a tragic assertion of control over the girlhoods they were never able to freely experience.
Through the film, Coppola immaculately explores the idealisation of girlhood, encouraging the audience not to fall for the false narratives and misunderstandings. Showing the heavy expectations that prevailed upon the young girls, the audience is given an insight into the male gaze and its destructive, erosive nature on girlhood.
Though the deaths are never intended to be a mystery, rather, quite the opposite. The book title and foreshadowing throughout make it blatantly obvious that the girls are to die, possibly to strike the audience with a question: how much knowledge do we need to be able to understand? The boys in the film seem to believe they know the girls, and so do the parents. Yet all seem to be so quickly fooled by their false perceptions.
Eugenides offers a compelling depiction of the girl beyond the manic-pixie fantasy, commenting on the complexity of the female experience, which is impossible for any outsider to understand. The girls are simply misunderstood, not truly known by anyone, living in the mystery of the insular chamber of the adolescent feminine mind. Nevertheless, itâs through this mystery that the girls gain autonomy and independence from their confining perceptions, and ultimately, they are free.
The parentsâ ignorance of the girlâs psychological problems is a fundamentally disappointing fallacy. Their ignorance and inability to understand their daughterâs struggles are the crux of the film, navigated carefully by Coppolaâs direction. The filmsâ tangible nostalgia weaves in themes of time and reflection on adolescence. Akin to the boys, we are all looking back, estranged from the people we once were. In a sense, the girls are free from this sentiment, unburdened by the hauntings of the past we can never experience again.
All in all, The Virgin Suicides is a tragically resonant commentary on the fragility of time, and the mystery of adolescence, conceptually, theirs and ours.