The Virgin Suicides: well worth another watch

Re-watched The Virgin Suicides for the first time in many years.

Just craved a movie that meant something. You know?

It was heartachingly beautiful. All the girls, particularly (of course) Kirsten Dunst, but also those coltish teenage boys. Sofia Coppola did such an incredible job, visually, with all that dreamy use of colour. But also with the scripting. She obviously drew directly on the book for a lot of that narration.

Like this bit.

“What lingered after them was not life, which always overcomes natural death, but the most trivial list of mundane facts: a clock ticking on a wall, a room dim at noon, and the outrageousness of a human being thinking only of herself.”

Strikes like an arrow, doesn't it.

I haven't actually read the book, but I recognised Eugenides' language from having read the excellent family saga Middlesex which he wrote 10 years later (I'm sure if I wrote The Virgin Suicides I'd want a decade's rest afterwards as well).

I'm now motivated to chase down a copy of The Virgin Suicides and read it. I am pretty sure the film's nailed it, but I just want more of that Eugenides word magic.

Also, I want more Sofia Coppola-directed movies. I'm reminded to seek out The Beguiled, which came out last year but I forgot to go see, and 2006's Marie Antoinette (both with Kirsten Dunst. Must be her muse). Anyone seen either of these? I'm taking recommendations.