What did you think of "The Virgin Suicides"?   Excellent 83%   Bad 4%   So-So 5%   Haven’t seen it 9%

Grade: B+

Verdict: A haunting, darkly comic elegy for adolescence.

Details: Starring Kristin Dunst, James Woods and Kathleen Turner. Rated R for strong thematic elements. 1 hour, 36 minutes.

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Review: When they're blue, the teenage Lisbon sisters loll about on the floor of one of their bedrooms, a single link of pale limbs and flowing blond hair. They're like marble figures reclining on a Greek frieze. That's appropriate in "The Virgin Suicides," a meditation on adolescence that finds mythic poetry in the unlikeliest place: suburban Michigan in the mid-1970s.

This shimmery, darkly comic adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides' novel marks the assured, often inspired feature film debut of writer-director Sofia Coppola. (Yes, that Sofia, who was unwisely cast by father Francis in his The Godfather: Part III.) She takes a dreamy, cinematically difficult book and creates a visually hypnotic movie.

The plot turns on the hormonal-emotional fascination of several teen boys, including Tim (Jonathan Tucker), with the five neighborhood muses: Cecilia (Hanna Hall), Therese (Leslie Hayman), Mary (A.J. Cook), Bonnie (Chelse Swain) and especially Lux (Kirsten Dunst).

We get to know some of these sisters better than the others, whereas some of the boys are interchangeable. But Virgin Suicides isn't about individuals so much as it is about memory, dreams, lost innocence and the dusky, summery twilight the mind casts over the past.

Admired from the distance enforced by their protective Catholic parents (James Woods and Kathleen Turner), the Lisbon sisters are a source of awed fascination for the boys, even before Cecilia, the youngest, takes a razor blade to her wrists in a failed suicide attempt.

As viewed by the boys, female adolescence is a thing of holy mystery, the girls' sweet smiles cloaking deep knowledge. "They knew everything about us and we couldn't fathom them at all," the narrator (Giovanni Ribisi, in voice-over) recalls. The movie revolves around this unsolved mystery. While we never exactly know why the Lisbon girls do what they do, Coppola uses style to absorb us. We become obsessed, too, and wonder why we've been seduced, abandoned and then haunted by these perfectly ordinary but enigmatic girls.

In a strong ensemble cast, Dunst is the standout, her flirtatious Lux reveling in the power of her youth and beauty. She's well-matched by Jonathan Hartnett as the school stud, thrown off track by her indifference to his come-ons. Woods and Turner offer strong character turns as the clueless parents. Though never on-screen, Ribisi is fine as the narrator.

At the end of the film, the narrator recalls how he and his friends tried to free themselves from the power of the sisters and "began the impossible process of trying to forget them." In much the same way, it will be hard to forget this movie, an elegy that manages to be both lustrous and prickly.

— Steve Murray, Cox News Service

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