film

Sofia Coppola was still in her twenties when her feature debut, The Virgin Suicides, hit the big screen in 1999. The first of her collaborations with Kirsten Dunst (the two have since worked together on Marie Antoinette, The Bling Ring and The Beguiled), it found Coppola adapting Jeffrey Euginides' 1993 novel of the same name, which is set in a quiet Michigan suburb in the 1970s.

Dunst plays Lux, the most rebellious of the four sisters left in the Lisbon family after the suicide of a fifth sister, Cecilia. The girls' parents, played by Kathleen Turner and James Woods, become increasingly strict, isolating them from the outside world and pushing their daughters towards drastic collective action. Air's soundtrack and Coppola's direction bathe the whole movie in a nostalgic, dreamlike haze despite the weighty, traumatic themes explored. A supremely assured debut that presaged so much wonderful work to come.