The Virgin Suicides: Was one I liked enough to go out and read the book a long time ago because the story was so unique and disturbing and beautiful all at the same time. A seemingly perfect family full of beautiful girls in a suburban neighbourhood end up being overly protected by their parents. The Lisbon girls are fascinating to the neighbour boys, one who narrates the story. At the beginning, the youngest sister seems to be the most unstable and she attempts suicide but during a rare party that their parents allow them to throw, Cecilia succeeds in killing herself, leaving the parents to keep the other sisters even more protected from the outside world. After Lux (Kirsten Dunst) is reluctantly allowed to go to prom, bringing her sisters along, they stay out after curfew and their parents remove the girls from school and end up keeping them prisoners in their own home. After months of witnessing Lux’s affairs on her rooftop, the boys receive a letter asking them to help them escape the house. When the boys arrive at the house, Lux chats with them while, quietly, each sister takes her own life. Yes, it is disturbing but the movie is so beautifully done that the tragedy in the story is handled in such a way that you understand and completely sympathize with the girls. Since it’s not on cable a lot, I’m not sure that a lot of female students would have seen this film before. I just appreciate it for the story craft and the American family saga aspect of it.
Narrator: So much has been said about the girls over the years. But we have never found an answer. It didn't matter in the end how old they had been, or that they were girls... but only that we had loved them... and that they hadn't heard us calling... still do not hear us calling them from out of those rooms... where they went to be alone for all time... and where we will never find the pieces to put them back together.
Loved both the book and the movie! Some of Eugenides most brilliant work.
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