Dir. Sofia Coppola
1999 | 97 mins | US
Kirsten Dunst, Josh Hartnett, Kathleen Turner

Part of: Cinema Rediscovered on Tour Cinema – the UK’s leading festival of classic cinema and film restorations – is back for its seventh edition. We celebrate their return to cinemas with a selection of two films as part of the season strand: ‘Restored & Rediscovered‘.

The breakthrough film for Sofia Coppola and a then-teenage Kirsten Dunst, The Virgin Suicides became an almost-instant cult classic courtesy of its dream-like cinematography by Ed Lachman, a chilled soundtrack from Air, and its morbid subject matter, all married to an ethereal, light aesthetic touch.

Adapted from Jeffrey Eugenides 1993 novel of the same name, the film tells the story of the five Lisbon sisters in the 1970s, the eldest of which is Lux (Dunst), living in a stifling suburban world hemmed in by their overprotective, ultraconservative parents (James Woods and Kathleen Turner). After the youngest sister Cecilia commits suicide, the Lisbon parents become increasingly controlling, isolating the rest of the sisters further, until everything backfires.

Premiering at the 1999 Cannes film festival, The Virgin Suicides was immediately acclaimed as one of the highlights of the year, announcing two major new talents in Coppola and Dunst. Melancholic, effortlessly cool and sad, the film has since firmly entered the busy canon of coming-of-age cinema.

A 4K restoration approved by director Sofia Coppola and supervised by cinematographer Ed Lachman courtesy of StudioCanal.

Presented as part of Cinema Rediscovered on Tour, a Watershed project. With support from BFI awarding funds from The National Lottery, Park Circus and MUBI.

Listen to the soundtrack on Spotify

TRIPLE F-RATED:

Directed by a woman, written by a woman and starring a significant woman.

F-Rating is a new rating for films directed by women, written by women and/or with significant female characters on screen, in their own right. Find out more here >>

∆ BBFC Rating Details:

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