Film

The Virgin Suicides

Name: The Virgin Suicides
Genre: Drama, Romance
Released: 2000
Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Josh Hartnett, James Woods, Kathleen Turner, Michael Paré

Sofia Coppola's debut, adapted from Jeffrey Eugenides, tells the Lisbon sisters' story entirely through the collective memory of the neighborhood boys who worshipped them from a distance. It's less plot than mood: hazy 70s suburbia, Air's dreamlike score, tragedy filtered through nostalgia and myth-making. Beautiful, elliptical, quietly devastating — for anyone who wants their coming-of-age story haunted rather than resolved.

TMDb rating

7.1

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Picnic at Hanging Rock1975

Schoolgirls vanish into the Australian bush and nobody ever really explains why — the same trick as Virgin Suicides, turning female mystery into pure atmosphere rather than plot, all sun-bleached dread and unresolved longing.

But If you need answers, you'll leave frustrated — the mystery is the entire point, not a puzzle to solve.

Heavenly Creatures1994

Peter Jackson's fevered true-crime drama about two teenage girls whose friendship curdles into obsession and violence — intense and operatic, just as fascinated by girlhood as a sealed, feverish world.

But It's far more violent and frantic than Coppola's hush — this is a scream, not a sigh.

Lost in Translation2003

Coppola's very next film, and the clearest sign of what she does best: aching, unresolved connection, gorgeous stillness, people trapped by circumstance rather than by plot.

But No teenagers, no tragedy here — it's an adult loneliness, and some miss the melancholy specificity of the earlier film.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Grey Gardens1976

Coppola's film is boys mythologizing girls they never really knew; this is real footage of two women the world mythologized the same way — isolation and legend assembled entirely from the outside.

The real-life Beales, a reclusive mother and daughter sealed inside a decaying mansion, filmed by the Maysles brothers with strange tenderness — myth-making happening to actual people instead of fictional ones.

But It's a documentary with no plot momentum at all — pure observation, and some find the subjects' decline hard to sit with.

The Beguiled2017no page yet

Coppola again, this time locking a houseful of women away from the world — same suffocating femininity and golden light, but with menace simmering instead of grief.

But The tone tips toward thriller by the end, which some felt betrayed the earlier hush.

The Ice Storm1997

Ang Lee's suburban 70s ensemble piece, another portrait of families quietly disintegrating behind manicured lawns and closed doors — same decade, same rot under the surface.

But It's colder and more ensemble-driven — you won't get the single, dreamlike narrating voice Coppola gives her boys.

American Beauty1999

The era's other landmark study of suburban repression and teenage longing, seen this time from the parents' side — a sharp companion piece on how adults fail their children.

But Its irony and dark comedy are a different animal from Coppola's tenderness; some find it smug where she is sincere.

Thirteen2003

Catherine Hardwicke's raw, handheld portrait of a girl spiraling through adolescence unnoticed by her mother — visceral where Coppola is dreamy, but just as concerned with girls slipping away.

But Nothing mythic here — it's grubby, immediate realism, the opposite of Coppola's soft-focus remove.

Welcome to the Dollhouse1996

Todd Solondz's gloriously uncomfortable comedy of suburban adolescent misery, sharp and cringing where Coppola is elegiac — proof the same subject can curdle into farce.

But It's abrasive and funny in a way that might feel like tonal whiplash if you wanted more elegy.

The Dreamers2003

Bertolucci's hothouse tale of obsessive, insular youth — different city, different decade, but the same sense of adolescence as its own sealed world, cut off from adults.

But It's far more explicit and adult, and lacks the ache of unfulfilled, unconsummated longing that defines Coppola's film.

The Innocents1961

The same slow, suffocating dread of a household sealed off from the world, and the same refusal to ever fully explain what's happening inside it — decades earlier, in a different genre entirely.

A gothic ghost story shot in gorgeous, chilling black and white, about a governess and two strange children in an isolated house — dread built almost entirely from suggestion.

But It's structured as a horror film, and the supernatural ambiguity may feel like a genre swerve from Coppola's grounded tragedy.

The Craft1996

Both turn a group of girls into a single mysterious entity, watched and feared by outsiders; The Craft just lets them fight back instead of disappearing.

Four teenage outcast girls discover witchcraft and briefly rule their high school — trashy, stylish 90s horror that takes 'girls as one mythic unit' and runs it straight into genre pleasure.

But It's camp where Coppola is elegy — loud soundtrack, supernatural stakes, and a taste for vengeance instead of grief.