6. The Virgin Suicides
Eternity PicturesThe Virgin Suicides is the absolutely beautiful, if fairly depressing, film adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides book of the same name. It was the feature-length directorial debut of Sophia Coppola, who is best known for slow-burning films that are gorgeous, sad, and usually lack any kind of resolution, and certainly sets the bar for her. The film follows four boys who are fascinated by the Lisbons, a set of five sisters that live in their neighbourhood. The Lisbons have strict parents, so these beautiful girls are obvious points of interest to the neighbourhood boys, but they soon realise that there is so much more going on in the family. The film opens on the suicide of the youngest sister, who jumps out of a window and impales herself on a fence. After her death, the sisters become even more isolated by their overprotective parents, until Lux (Kirsten Dunst) engages in a relationship with the high -school heartthrob Trip (Josh Hartnett). After he abandons her she starts sleeping with several other people, much to the attention of the boys who watch her. The sisters then finally leave a note for the boys that they clearly know have been watching from afar. Assuming this is a cry for help, they go to the house and find that all of the sisters have killed themselves in a series of imaginative and original ways. The Virgin Suicides is definitely not a film for a date, or something you curl up with a bag of popcorn when youre alone on a Friday night. The Lisbon parents move away and the suburb in which they lived falls into decline. We never find out why the sisters all decided to take their own lives, and the tragedy remains unexplained as their deaths touch the boys for the rest of their own lives.