The Virgin Suicides is a 1999 American psychological romantic drama film written and directed by Sofia Coppola adapted from the book The Virgin Suicides written by Jeffrey Eugenides. Starring Kirsten Dunst as Lux Lisbon
Josh Hartnett as Trip Fontaine
Hanna R.Hall as Cecillia Lisbon
A.J Cook as Mary Lisbon
Leslie Hayman as Therese Lisbon
Kathleen Turner as Mrs.Lisbon
Chelsea Swain as Bonnie Lisbon
As the title suggests this is about the suicides of five sisters known throughout the book as the Lisbon girls ,The book takes you on a journey as to how and why these girls die .
The narration of this book is from a point of view of unnamed teenage boys who live in the same neighborhood as the Lisbon girls and it follows them retracing the steps and the lives of the girls to try and work out why this happened?,finding evidence from people who knew them but not once do we hear from the actual girls perspective.
Youngest Cecillia Lisbon commits suicide first her first effort happens when she cuts her wrists open in a bath ,Paul Baldino the son of a rich gangster finds her by entering the Lisbon home via the neighborhood storm drains then Paul sneaks inside the home to upstage Peter Sisson the only boy to ever be invited ,When Peter helps Mr Lisbon with a scale model of his cosmos in his classroom he gets invited to dinner then Peter snoops around the sister's bathroom and finds a used tampax he proudly informs the other boys and when Paul hears this he boasts that he will go into the Lisbon home and observe the girls bathing but when he sneaks into the home and sneaks into the bathroom he discovers Cecillia in bloody bathwater holding a laminated card with a Virgin Mary image .
He phones the police horrified .Cecillia survives this ordeal a psychiatrist tells her parents that she needs to spend more time with people so The Lisbons host a party the neighborhood boys are excited to get invited ,They enter the Lisbon home and are led to the basement where the sisters are waiting ,After an uneasy start everyone starts talking except Cecillia who sits silently with a bandaged wrist and she eventually begs her Father to go upstairs and he reluctantly agrees ,When she climbs the stairs everyone is quiet a fence post impaling Cecillia's corpse breaks the quiet .
Mr Lisbon rushes outside to aid Cecillia but it's evident she didn't survive ,Cecillia dies leaving the neighborhood clueless and The Lisbons seem odd and aloof when the adults offer their sympathy ,Moody the village Priest can't get Mr Lisbon to speak about what happened ,He observes the sad condition of the home as he moves through the hallways ,When Father Moody finds the Lisbon sisters gathered in a bedroom he is struck by their distress and filth ,In hindsight he is certain that they didn't have any intentions to commit suicide after seeing their anguish .
The Lisbon sisters don't see the boys all summer ,Lux Lisbon starts to sneak around with some guys because her parents don't allow her to date so she must be cautious ,Trip Fontaine who falls for Lux is barely noticed by her untill he follows her to an assembly sits next to her and whispers that he is going to ask Lux's dad that if he can take her out he even insists on coming over to watch tv with the family even though she says there's no possibility .Trip spends the whole evening watching TV with the Lisbon family but Mr and Mrs Lisbom sit on the couch between Trip and Lux .
Mr Lisbon finally tell him it's time to go and Lux walks him to the door while looking at him with a sorry face because she knows her parents will never let her go out with him .He goes to his car in a bad mood and sits there for a moment but then out of nowhere it seems like a deity is hovering over him and sucking his face .Lux is straddling him he realizes she is kissing him so intensely that he can hardly hold his composure grasping for her in a frantic overwhelmed manner till she quickly disappears .
In the following weeks the boys learned that Lux has been grounded Mr and Mrs Lisbon get stricter and their home becomes worse ,Trip goes to Mr Lisbon's class and declares his desire to take Lux to the homecoming dance and Mr Lisbon says that it's up to his wife and that making an exception for lux wouldn't be fair to his other kids .Trip promises to gather a gang of men to take all the Lisbon girls ,Trip visits the Lisbon house the evening of the homecoming dance along with three other boys the sisters are really happy and excited and they seem to enjoy the night especially Lux and Bonnie who sneak under the bleachers with Trip and Joe Hill Conley to drink peach schnapps and kiss while the sweet taste is still on their lips but by night's end Trip and Lux disappear so the others have to leave without them .
The boys discover that Trip and Lux had intercourse on the football field ,Trip had feelings for Lux but after they had intimacy he wanted to be alone so he abandoned her on the field. After the homecoming dance Mr and Mrs Lisbon become increasingly more stricter and scarcely allowing their daughters to leave the house even removing them from school. At this point Mr Lisbon resigns as a teacher but most of the people realized he was forced to quit since none of the local parents believed he could manage his own family .
Lux begins having intercourse with different guys on the roof of the Lisbon home which is even more scandalous. The boys spy on Lux's activities from across the street and see that she's becoming slim . Lux's fake stomach discomfort to obtain a covert pregnancy test at the hospital persuading the doctor not to notify her parents. She finds out that she is not pregnant but has HPV as winter progresses the Lisbon residence deteriorates .
By spring the boys don't think of the sisters that much after all its baseball season and they haven't seen the girls in a long time except for brief glimpses. At one point the parks department comes to the Lisbon's front yard to cut down a diseased tree because most of the town's elm trees are sick with a fungus and needed to be taken down. Nevertheless the Lisbon sisters prevent them from felling it since it was Cecillia's favorite tree .In late spring the boys believe the sisters are conversing cryptically with them.They are right the sister's are talking to them as shown by the notes they leave in their mailboxes .One of the notes say remember us ,In the end the boys call the girls .Mr Lisbon answers first but they remain on the line until they can hear the girls .
Once Mr Lisbon hangs up they hear a weak dejected sister say hello and hang up.The boys continue to get calls but they opt to hold the phone to a stereo instead of speaking .For a time they alternate between the guys playing blatantly armorous tunes and the Lisbon sisters responding with a song of their own choice in the end the sisters play bred naked with u which sends the boys into a frenzy .After this interaction the boys wait for the signal the next night .The boys are thrilled believing the sisters wanted to be spared from their miserable existence.
After sipping bear in their common tree house and waiting for the Lisbon sisters to wave through a window the boys sneak into the Lisbon home via the back door where Lux awaits them .With their imaginations running wild they agree to go to Florida with her while lux insists they wait for her sisters to pack .She unbuckles Chase Buell's belt and as she hears a bang upstairs says they'll have to wait .They wait and find Cecillia's party decorations in the basement suddenly to their horror they discover Bonnie has hung herself and they escape the basement.The boys later piece it all together Lux js unbuckled Chase Buell's belt to buy time untill her sister kicked over the trunk she was standing on .Then she walked over to her parents garage and started the automobile asphyxiating herself in it.
Mary stuck her head in the oven ,Therese was most likely already dead after swallowing a slew of medicines.Mary survives her suicide attempt but only briefly the next summer the boys come home from a party after drinking and making out with girls and discover paramedics lifting Mary's dead corpse onto a stretcher like Therese she died by swallowing pills .After the Lisbon suicides the parks department take down Cecillia's elm tree .Everyone thinks the nation is in decline and the neighborhood is harsh and odd .The Lisbon sisters are suspected foreseeing this downfall in choosing to die .The boys will never know why the sisters died but they will always think about them .