Sofia Coppola has massive plans for the twenty fifth anniversary of her directorial debut “The Virgin Suicides.”
The 2000 function, which premiered at Cannes, cemented Coppola as the director for younger feminine angst. Kirsten Dunst led the movie adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides’ 1993 novel that facilities on the 5 fictional Lisbon sisters who kill themselves one after the other. Kathleen Turner and James Woods play their overprotective, non secular dad and mom; Dunst stars as center sister Lux. The movie, regardless of grossing slightly below $5 million within the U.S. towards a $9 million price range, later grew to become of a cult traditional that was synonymous with the melancholic realization that teenage longing and ennui can prolong into maturity.
Coppola instructed ELLE that she and frequent collaborator Dunst have plans to mark the twenty fifth anniversary of “The Virgin Suicides.” (Dunst and Coppola have reunited on options “Marie Antoinette” and “The Beguiled.”)
“I feel Kirsten [Dunst] and I’ll plan to do some screenings or one thing round it,” Coppola stated of “The Virgin Suicides” turning 25. “I’ve at all times had a connection to that point in life; it’s one thing that I’m drawn to…a lot of my work has been round younger girls rising up, and the truth that that may nonetheless join with individuals makes me glad.”
Coppola beforehand stated within the movie’s official manufacturing notes again in 2000 that Eugenides’ novel impressed her to strive directing.
“I actually didn’t know I wished to be a director till I learn ‘The Virgin Suicides’ and noticed so clearly the way it needed to be finished,” Coppola stated. “I instantly noticed the central story as being about what distance and time and reminiscence do to you, and concerning the extraordinary energy of the unfathomable. It’s concerning the massive themes in life: about mortality and obsession and love.”
Coppola later instructed Leisure Weekly in 2018 that she wished to create a brand new “aesthetic” onscreen due to the novel.
“There wasn’t a lot poetic filmmaking that spoke to me as a woman and a younger lady, and likewise handled [us] with respect I felt that viewers deserved,” Coppola stated. “I like Jeffrey [Eugenides’] ebook and I felt like he actually captured the thriller of that age, so it was the ebook that motivated me to wish to make that movie, however I didn’t actually see that aesthetic [in other movies].”
She stated that distributor Paramount Classics was stumped with easy methods to market her imaginative and prescient for the movie, although.
“It didn’t have a lot of a launch,” Coppola stated. “Paramount Classics didn’t actually know what to do with it. They have been afraid that ladies have been going to commit suicide in the event that they noticed it! It had a very small launch. We made it for little or no, so that they didn’t must do a lot to make it.”
She added after the movie was restored in 4K with the Criterion Assortment, “It made me glad when, about 10 years in the past, individuals began telling me that their teenage daughters liked the film. I used to be like, they weren’t even born then! How do they even find out about it? I’m glad that it has had a second life, and it makes me glad that ladies of different generations connect with it and discover one thing in it. It didn’t have a lot of a life on the time it got here out.”
And Coppola now has one other movie within the works after her 2023 biopic “Priscilla.” Coppola confirmed to ELLE that she is within the “early phases” of a brand new mission, which she describes as “not shaped but,” although it would heart on a feminine character.
“There’s somebody that I’m fixated on,” she stated. “I at all times love tales the place you possibly can relate to the ladies. I don’t really feel like there are plenty of films the place I can relate to the ladies characters at this second.”