The Virgin Suicides

I cannot remember how I first came to hear of the Virgin Suicides. I vaguely remember seeing it lying around my friend Claire's house who I went to college with back in 2001 and being very intrigued by it but I never got around to seeing for some time.

One of the greatest aspects of the film for me is how dull everything is that is going on around it. I know that might sound odd but it is this level of dullness but at the same time being told right away there is a massive level of darkness for me only makes it more interesting. It is suburb life not on crack but on sleeping tablets.

I am watching it for the first time in a while at the moment and am going to go back to it but I wanted to post this before I forgot to and gain other peoples opinion of the film.

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I just saw it a couple of weeks ago. I thought it was original and fairly well executed. Not a masterpiece by any means but a solid film.

This movie was just the most overrated piece of babble. Sophia Coppola desperately needs her "art" to be edited. Actually, editing doesnt substitute empty imagery with actual content, but whatever it is, she needed something. Just a dreary dud.

I don't understand Sofia Coppola. Her instincts seem to be getting farther away from commercial with each film, but they aren't being replaced by anything I'd call artistic. This was her first film, but it really didn't amount to anything special. It was a little promising in direction but woefully inadequate scriptwise. I think she got adversely affected by all the praise she somehow received for her next film, Lost in Translation, that good-natured but mostly-meaningless exercise in minimalism. It's all been downhill since. I know others disagree, but she seems lost at sea as to how to communicate her ideas in a fresh manner. Shut up, mark.

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The book was good!

Nah you had too much to draw upon and were too articulate to where that could be called "hating". I kind of put her in the same mix with M Night. Style overwhelmed her need to learn solid storytelling skills.

I think banal is the word the OP was looking for over 'dull', of which The Virgin Suicides is not. The strange reality of the story is certainly calm and nothing exhilerating. It's one of those 'everything is great on the outside, but look behind closed doors and the truth is revealed'. Not quite understanding the dislike of this film.

Sofia is one of the best film makers of her generation working right now. She is the master of the sensual moody style (e.g. The Virgin Suicides, Lost In Translation) and has flawless control over visuals and music, and the way she edits them together. Such as the sequence in TVS where they read Cecilia's journal, and it transitions into the montage of the sisters in the field, the unicorn, the sunset, all to AIR's wonderful Ce Matin La.

Anyway, the film is a worthy adaptation of the novel, but the novel (here it comes) blew me away. I had read it after being a fan of the film for many years. Believe I finished it in about a day and a half. And it took the movie down for me, but just a little bit.

I keep novels and films separated as their own entities. Two different branches of the same tree. So The Virgin Suicides is a great film on it's own, as an adaptation it captures the compellingly strange tone and subtle humor throughout, but leaves out many wonderful moments.

Still, love the movie, love Coppola. Can't wait for her Little Mermaid adaptation. But she is an aquired taste, where some see hypnotic beauty and depth, others see the films as empty nothing below the surface.

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Recent Viewings (rewatches noted with an *)
Barbarian- (4/5)
Nope- (4.5/5)
Jurassic Park Dominion- 0.5/5
What Josiah Saw- (4.5/5)

Oh and just for the sake of it, here are my ratings of her films out of four s

The Bling Ring-
Lost In Translation -
Marie Antoinette- 1/2
Somewhere-
The Virgin Suicides-

I think you are right in this yes. I think "dull" was not quite the word because it is a long stretch of being dull. I think you are right in the sense of outside in very much in the way that American Beauty did. I cannot understand why people think this is dull but everyone as we say is entitled to their opinion.