The series A posteriori le cinéma is intended to be an opportunity to celebrate the 7the art by revisiting flagship titles that celebrate important anniversaries.
When the 1999 vintage of the Cannes Film Festival is mentioned in film-loving circles, it is most of the time in connection with the controversial Palme d’Or awarded to Rosettefrom the Dardenne brothers, rather than All about my mother (Todo sobre mi madre), by Pedro Almodóvar, a favorite of the critics, but apparently not of the jury chaired by David Cronenberg. However, in the shadow of these cockfights, an event occurred that year that was much more significant than an awards ceremony: the emergence of a female director. Indeed, 25 years ago this month, Sofia Coppola unveiled at the Quinzaine des filmmakers The Virgin Suicides (Ultimate Scream), a first feature film of exquisite mastery.
At the time, Sofia Coppola remained mainly associated with the failure of the film The Godfather Part III (The Godfather III), of his father, Francis Ford Coppola, whom many attributed, unfairly, to his interpretation of Mary Corleone, the daughter of Michael Corleone. Hence the surprise to see her bounce back on the Croisette as a filmmaker, and a gifted one at that.
The Virgin Suicides tells the tragic fate of the Lisbon sisters, five teenagers living under the rule of oppressive parents. The action takes place in a suburban town in 1975, but is narrated in the present by a former neighbor who, like his friends then, was fascinated by the Lisbon sisters.
And the narrator admits that he and his friends never stop trying to understand what once pushed Therese, Mary, Bonnie, Lux and Cecilia to end their lives: “In the end, we had the pieces of the puzzle, but no matter how we put them together, holes remained. A void with strange shapes, like a map of countries that we could not name. »
When she finished it, her script was one of the best I had read in ten years. We tracked down the adaptation rights holders, they read Sofia’s script, and they thought like me.
Like Sofia Coppola’s subsequent films, The Virgin Suicides is interested in the inner world of adolescent girls or young women in need of freedom – here parents, later a father (Somewhere/Somewhere ; On the Rocks), a fiancé or a husband (Lost in Translation/Unfaithful translation ; Priscilla), a medium (Marie Antoinette ; The Bling Ring), a predator (The Beguiled)…
Like, again, Sofia Coppola’s later films, The Virgin Suicides offers a staging whose fluidity is akin to a flow of thoughts, between evocative paintings and ethereal flashes. In doing so, the filmmaker places us in the cozy intimacy of her characters.
Vaporous reminiscence
In a documentary made during filming by her mother, Eleonor Coppola, Sofia Coppola explains her attraction to the novel by Jeffrey Eugenides, on which the film is based: “I loved the mystery that hovers around the Lisbon sisters. I grew up surrounded by boys, in an Italian family, so this very feminine world immediately captivated me. […] I immediately saw the film in my head, and like any creative person, I wanted to get it out and show the world. »
Initially, the novel was to be adapted by others. In the said documentary, Francis Ford Coppola remembers: “Sofia fell in love with this novel and asked me if I could help her acquire the rights to it. I couldn’t, because a major studio already had them. Despite this, Sofia started writing. And I told her: “Sofia, don’t break your heart; Don’t write a script that you can’t do anything about afterwards.” When she finished it, her script was one of the best I had read in ten years. We tracked down the adaptation rights holders, they read Sofia’s script, and they thought like me. »
Carried by the soaring music of the Air group, as if in weightlessness, The Virgin Suicides follows its course like a vaporous reminiscence. In his criticism of SlantEd Gonzalez greets a “ glamour nostalgic”: “Coppola’s dreamlike paean to golden adolescence has universal appeal […] Coppola waxes poetic about female subjectivity, dreamily detailing the imprisonment of young girls whom the boys desperately try to understand. »
To his director of photography Edward Lachman (Carol), Sofia Coppola gave references to the light of the film Badlands (The wild ride), by Terrence Malick, and a cycle by photographer Bill Owens entitled Suburbia. The result was, to use Ed Gonzalez’s phrase, an invoice reminiscent of “the pages of an old, lost photo album.”
Inner qualities
Kathleen Turner, who brilliantly plays the authoritarian mother, was the first actress Sofia Coppola approached. For the anecdote, the second had played the little sister of the first in the wonderful Peggy Sue Got Married (Peggy Sue got married), by Francis Ford Coppola. During her visit to the now defunct World Film Festival, Kathleen Turner told Duty : “I played the strict mother: an experience as beautiful as it was painful. Sofia is the opposite of her father. He is expansive. It is erased. Both of their methods work perfectly. »
The iconic actress of Virgin Suicides However, is Kirsten Dunst, who plays Lux, the only one of the five sisters who rebels. In a retrospective documentary produced by Criterion in 2019, the filmmaker summarizes the reasons that pushed her to choose Dunst: “I had seen Kirsten at the time ofInterview with the Vampire [Entretien avec un vampire] and I was struck by the depth she exuded at such a young age: she managed to convey the depth of this elderly character trapped in a child’s body. And I loved the way her appearance contrasted with some of her inner qualities: Kirsten looked like the archetypal bubbly American blonde, but, like Lux, there was something unfathomable in her eyes. »
For his part, Dunst, who would find the director on Marie Antoinette And The Beguiledadmits in the Criterion documentary: “I was very intimidated, because it was the first time I felt like a character matched the feelings I was having […] I think Sofia saw something in me that, for my part, I couldn’t even express. »
This proves to be in line with one of the objectives of the filmmaker, who recalls a little further: “When I was filming The Virgin SuicidesI said to myself: “Why couldn’t there be films for young women that were made with respect, and that treated them like a serious audience? […] I wanted to do something artistic aimed at girls.” »
Campion the Admirer
Precisely, this affirmed artistic dimension earned Sofia Coppola the criticism by some (and this continues) of favoring form to the detriment of substance. A reading that two distinguished sisters of the filmmaker do not share.
As Rachel Syme reports in a recent portrait of New Yorker : “Chloé Zhao, who won the Oscar for best director in 2021 for Nomadlandtold me that she admires Sofia Coppola for her “construction of worlds that are not only based on facts, but also on emotions” […]. Jane Campion [The Piano/La leçon de piano]who counts The Virgin Suicides among his favorite films, pointed out to me that Coppola’s gentle approach to actors and his attention to what’s on the surface can be deceptive: “His work is very powerful, because it has roots deep.” »
And in fact, The Virgin Suicides caresses the eye, but is no less imprinted on the memory. In the documentary made by her mother, the main interested party returns in these terms to the structure based on memories, as well as to the evanescent nature of these: “There are always moments, in life, which are magical and perfect, except they don’t last. »
Film by which Sofia Coppola gave birth to herself as a filmmaker, The Virgin Suicides constitutes one of those “magical and perfect” moments, but one which, thanks to the enduring nature of cinema, will last forever.
The film The Virgin Suicides is available on VOD on most platforms.