Who is this about?
I guess that is really the question. Who, or even better what is this movie about? You would expect this movie to be about the girls, the virgins. In a way it is, but only in a superficial way. I don't really know, but I think that this movie can be seen as a female version of Fight Club. That is, where Fight Club wanted to show men dealing with anger, disillusionment and violence, The Virgin Suicides wants to show young girls dealing with pain, disillusionment and love. I thought that, and maybe its true at some level, but I think that misses the point.
The difficulty that I think some people might have with this movie is the "Thin Red Line/Private Ryan" problem (send me an e-mail and I'll explain the problem explicitly). Though this movie has a narrator, and the time settings are not difficult to follow this movie is not a narrative, but an allegory. THIS IS A MOVIE ABOUT SEX and how we kill our own ideals and our own innocence.
The question you ought to ask yourself is not "why did they kill themselves?" but "what has changed now that they are dead?" Maybe I missed something, but I don't think you will find a satisfactory answer to the first question. And, sorry ladies, but if you look for an answer to the second question the most important characters are no longer the troubled teenaged girls who write bad poetry, but the seemingly one dimensional boys. Oh, and the girls' parents - not important. They are just as annoying as any set of parents might seem to any set of teenagers.
In order to understand this movie you have to understand the proper characters - who they are and what they represent. The movie is a reflection about a sexual ideal (the girls) in an Eden (suburbia). To begin with there is no knowledge (experience) only a perfect idea (the girls). The story is about original sin, about getting forbidden knowledge and finding out that it might not be what we thought. Again, why these girls killed themselves is not important, only that they did. If this was a movie about characters, properly speaking, it would fail miserably. The girls don't really develop, the older one does a bit. The boys are inarticulate and abscessed. And, abscessed people don't change. In the context of an allegory these are important points, and do not detract but enhance the power of the film.
This is a good movie. I like it because it appears to be trendy, but I don't think a lot of people will get it. They will leave asking the wrong questions, questions that ultimately are not answered by the film. Those same people will leave saying "yeah that was cool because it was so messed up" The movie was too well done to be left at that. It had to be taken to the next level, a level where different questions get answered successfully. Further, it is not a movie that holds you by the hand, but relies on the viewers intelligence to grasp the intelligence of the film (this is not something Hollywood does very often).
I give this movie a four stars (****) on the official Chris' Choice movie rating scale.
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