A Startling Picture... (The Virgin Suicides (DVD))

Member Name: katkitkatty

Product:	The Virgin Suicides (DVD)
Date:	10/08/02 (41 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It has Kirsten in it - she's a great young actress., The story is whatever you make it - Light or Heavy., It has an underprocessed rawness which makes it so delightful.

Disadvantages: It's American, and there are lots of those irritating Americanisms creeping in.

Miss Dunst reigns supreme in this daring movie, and I would choose this performance as her career high to date.

The opening scene is seductive in a way that binds the viewer to the screen. Adolescent innocence has often been leeched upon in films, in an effort to set the viewer's emotive senses reeling. But as too often, the striving for this is so blatantly obvious, half of the indulgence can be lost. The cynic in all of us will pause to make an observation of this weakness and a criticism of the way that the film's structure is showing through. The Virgin Suicides masterfully avoids this tedium right from the start. As a result, Kirsten's lollipop-sucking show of chastity is a delight in every possible way.

The secret in film is to bulk out every manipulation which is to be made upon the viewer so much that they fail to notice how they are being programmed. Despite this, I strongly believe that every film must be run to a formula. However, the closer the movie can get to the borderlines of this formula; and the more in can weaken its rigidity; the stronger it will be able to withstand any criticism that comes its way.

The Virgin Suicides is simply a masterpiece in film, and the first rung on the ladder of daring which has been exposed in a much lighter way. Those who devoured this film as I did must seducethemselves with 'Mulholland Drive'. Although darker and more sultry, it is as defiently different and as unconcluding as The Virgin Suicides.

Both have a perfect ending - one which does not completely finish the story to a point. It leaves the viewer feeling that they have witnessed a conclusion which they have not thoroughly understood. In my experience, that is a good feeling. After all, we watch movies like these not to be comforted with predictability, but to be challenged.

Because we all relish a challenge.

Summary: