Darren Richman

SOFIA Coppola was awarded the Best Director gong at Cannes last month, only the second woman to win the prize. Some are suggesting that The Beguiled might just be her masterpiece.

The film-maker’s career started with The Virgin Suicides in 1999, a skilful adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides’s debut novel.

The story of the gestation of the film is an intriguing one. Coppola was given the book by Thurston Moore of the band Sonic Youth and became so enamoured with that work that she adapted it into a screenplay.

After completing the script, she was devastated to learn that another company was producing their own adaptation.

Since their script proved disappointing, however, they ended up using Coppola’s version.

The Virgin Suicides takes place in Michigan during the mid-1970s but is narrated by one of a group of boys who lusted after the Lisbon sisters with the benefit of a quarter of a century of distance.

The Lisbons, aged between 13 and 17, are fawned over by the neighbourhood adolescent males in spite of, or perhaps because of, their unattainable status. Raised by strict Catholic parents, we are informed in the opening scene that the girls will commit suicide but the key question is why.

Perhaps the best answer comes from the youngest, Cecilia, when a doctor tells her she’s too young to know how bad life gets and she replies, “Obviously, doctor, you’ve never been a 13-year-old girl”.

The period detail is pitch perfect and impressive given the auteur was born in 1971 so her memories of the era would be hazy. The soundtrack, comprising 1970s acts like Steely Dan, Carole King and Todd Rundgren, helps evoke a bygone era while the darkness that lies behind the white picket fences calls to mind the opening of Blue Velvet.

Kathleen Turner and James Woods are excellent as well-meaning but oppressive parents, evoking both sympathy and irritation.

The real star, however, is Coppola, whose remarkably assured debut blends tragedy with comedy and employs a curious, idiosyncratic tone. There is a sense that the sorrows of the girls come to represent the difficulties faced by an entire gender.

Coppola’s follow-up, Lost in Translation, would see her become just the third woman to be nominated for a Best Director Oscar but it’s worth seeing where it all began for one of modern cinema’s most distinctive voices. – The Independent