With this adaptation of the literary craze of the day, Jeffrey Eugenides' novel about five teenage sisters who commit themselves in 1970s suburban Michigan, Sofia Coppola made her feature film debut over 25 years ago. It has since been redistributed with a solemn trigger-warning disclaimer at the beginning about historical attitudes that might now offend; this appears to refer to the entire premise of the movie, which is right there in the title but is now treated more cautiously in light of new concepts surrounding self-harm and "suicidal ideation."

It would be honest of me to confess that I didn't entirely comprehend this movie back in 2000, and perhaps I still don't quite today. This was a film that baffled as many people as it enthralled. However, I can perhaps see its artistic merits and poise more clearly, as well as the assured way Coppola allows her movie to be serenely mysterious and almost emotionless in its sunny suburban calm, a reserve that seems to hide the shocking nature of the story itself: a terrible tragedy masquerading as a teen coming-of-age drama.

Coppola's career began with The Virgin Suicides, which also gave us our first glimpse of his tone of reserve, blankness, subversive take on the feminine mystique, and refusal to satirise or ironize what might be considered privileged female lives. These traits were later used to various effects in films like Lost in Translation, Somewhere, and The Bling Ring. Kirsten Dunst, who gained her fame as a youngster in Interview With the Vampire, also saw the beginning of her adult career with The Virgin Suicides. She portrays the seductive Lux, and it's possible that she'll never have another job quite like this sphinx-like one (although she did play an intriguingly chilly Marie Antoinette in Coppola's very sympathetic 2006 movie). The voiceover narration is by Giovanni Ribisi, and perhaps Coppola was aiming for something like the gravelly assurance and substance of Ray Liotta’s remembering voice in Scorsese’s Goodfellas.