Director: Sofia Coppola
Starring: James Woods, Kathleen Turner, Kirsten Dunst, Josh Hartnett, Hanna R. Hall, Chelse Swain, A.J. Cook, Leslie Hayman, Danny DeVito

- Reviewed by Robert

A strong first effort by Sofia Coppola crosses Heathers with American Graffiti in a story about a family of girls who commit suicide in the late '70s, but unfortunately it comes up lacking any deep resonance.

The story is told through the eyes of a group of boys who watched the girls from the safety of a house across the street, for whom the girls' suicides affected all their lives. A Wonder Years-esque voice-over explains their collections of memorabilia stolen or acquired from the girls, accompanies their observations, and vocalizes their questions—most of which never find answers. The boys never have any significant contact with the girls, and the film explores the vicarious speculations of the voyeurs with insight and ironic humor. This is what the film does best: it draws you into the atmosphere of adolescence with all its yearning for significance and drama.

The period details—right down to the filming style and the occasional special effects—support this atmosphere. The music, the wardrobes, the architecture, and the colors all drop you squarely in your memories of the late seventies, and Coppola plays with universal teenage fears, needs and opportunities so that you revisit your own high school days no matter what decade they happened in.

One girl's attempt at suicide opens the film, and her success soon follows. The rest of the movie we watch the other sisters, mostly the oldest, played by Kirsten Dunst and named Lux—a bizarre name for a Catholic girl—waiting for them to follow suit as the voice-over has told us they will. The suspense of how and why the suicides will occur, combined with the that's-so-true reaction to the atmosphere, holds your attention right up until the end. But when you get to the end, you realize it's missing the essence of a story: characters who change. The boys start the film as obsessed voyeurs, and end the film as obsessed voyeurs who have nothing to watch anymore. The girls, well they die, but we're never allowed into their minds to understand who they really are or why they kill themselves. In other words, the girls are never really drawn out as characters.

Some insight into the characters would provide some better connections between the events leading up to the suicides of the title. What were the girls' motives? Or the boys' motives for watching them, for that matter; I mean, were they just randy or was there some real awareness of human tragedy going on? Both are presented in the voice-overs. And perhaps some deeper exploration of the "virgin" theme would help, too. Holy cards in bike spokes just aren't enough for me. Indeed, the only motive even proposed is a cheap shot at the apparently repressive nature of their Catholic family, but stereotypes never quite cut it as development unless they're fully fleshed out. These weren't.

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