5 curiosities about the Virgin Suicides, from the most beautiful to the most disturbing (like the film)

1 – Josh Hartnett, the ridiculously cut hunk wore a wig” brain teaser ****** (which Sofia Coppola kept)

Josh Hartnett he gave of himself build the myth Travel fountainthe (ultra-toxic) high school hunk of Virgin suicides.

While the character is presented as a bomb of charisma that everyone loves and that only talks to girls by pressing them against a locker, actor Josh Hartnett was faced with a very trivial problem: an unbearable wig.

During a meeting of the cast of the film organized on June 18, 2020 on the occasion of his 20 yearsthe actor was caught up in the rise of a capillary trauma and laughed: “I forgot how tough the wig was. » We believe it right away, when we see the pictures of this wig disheveled red mullet, sublimated by a decidedly too lateral parting.

Amused, admitted Sofia Coppola “It probably wasn’t the best quality wig. But it worked” and he even confided that he did kept the wigwhich he treasured!

2 – We are never better served only by itself : Sofia Coppola wrote her film while another adaptation was on the way

We are never better served than by ourselvesand it is not Sofia Coppola who says the opposite.

Virgin suicides is the adaptation of the homonymous novel by Jeffrey Eugenides, released in 1993. Sofia Coppola had read it long before I became a director. In an interview with Entertainment Weeklythe director confided that she had known that the book would be transposed to the screen and that she had thought “I love the book and I hope they don’t ruin it by making a movie! ». One thing led to another, she ended up writing her own film:

“I knew the movie wasn’t going to get made eventually, so I started working on my script, to learn how to adapt a book. I thought I’d only do a few chapters, in the end I wrote the whole script!

I got so hooked that I ended up really wanting the movie, so I met with the producers [et] I asked them to read my version. I heard it [l’autre réalisateur] Done in a really dark wayand I wanted it to have a touch lighterthat’s how I imagined it when I read the book.

3 – The film is the author’s favorite adaptation of the original novel because the girls’ story is more important than the boys’ point of view

At first glance, one may be surprised that Virgin suicides be told from a’s point of view group of boys. Despite the originality and audacity of this bias in a feminist film, it’s okay girls experience which is the focus of Coppola’s footage. The boys could very well be the mediators of the gaze on the Lisbon sisters, it is immediately clear that they turn out to be unable to understand these girls who fascinate them and whose mystery they try to unravel.

This subtlety, the author of the novel, Jeffrey Eugenides, well perceived and appreciated. The writer was completely convinced by Coppola’s stagingto the point that his film has established itself as his favorite adaptation :

“Of all the adaptations, Sofia’s was the best. I think she is more intrigued by the girls’ own story only from the point of view of the boys, which thus gives different nuances to the story. While I was writing the novel, I was more concerned about the girls and Sofia understood this very well. »

4 – The best shots were the ones “where the girls were really bored”

Self Virgin suicides is part of those movies you remember for a lifetimeit is particularly because the talent of Sofia Coppola and the actresses make it a particular visceral, sensory and engaging.

We don’t just look at these girls, from a distance, without understanding what they are feeling: one gets the impression of really being with her, in the languor and melancholy of their daily lives. It’s almost as if we could feel what they feel – moments of lightness, of boredom OR despair.

If this immersion is possible, it is because Sofia Coppola has worked extensively with these actresses, so much so that the film is to the closest their experience on set. In the columns of voguethe director explained that the film was shot in a month, in the summer of 1998. She then tried to capture the moments when the actresses really slipped into boredom and languor :

” It was very short, low budget and messy. We were making the movie and we were still exhausted because we were making it those long shots of the girls hanging out in their rooms. Whenthey were really bored, the little details were starting to come out and I was filmingagain, long stretched sequences…”

5 – To write the music for the film, the AIR group receiveds VHS tapes “with chicks cutting their wrists or hanging themselves”

Virgin suicides it wouldn’t be the film we know without it its captivating and bewitching soundtrack, signed by the French group Air.

Sofia Coppola discovered their first EP, ‘First Symptoms’, which she listened to while writing the script Virgin suicides. Realizing that the mood of the album was what she was looking for for her film of hers, the director hired the group to compose her music.

For this reason, Sofia Coppola chose a particular working method: she sent the members of the group scenes from the film that hadn’t been edited. In an interview for the Unbreakable in 2015 the musicians said they were impressed the violence of these images :

” The book and the rushes were super dark. We were in the middle of winter, we got VHS tapes of chicks cutting their wrists or hanging themselves… They were pieces of scenes, without editing. In the editing there is a light and evanescent side that we hadn’t caught in the rush.”

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