AFI Picks The Virgin Suicides. Start With Eleanor Coppola’s Making-of Film

Eleanor Coppola took a camera behind the scenes of The Virgin Suicides in 1998. Her daughter’s first feature was still being made. It hadn’t become a film that people brought up when they talked about Kirsten Dunst or Sofia Coppola. That’s the extra to put on the list if the American Film Institute’s November 10 Movie Club pick sends you back to the film. Criterion includes Eleanor’s documentary in its edition.

Who was on that set?

AFI points out a family connection. Francis Ford Coppola was a producer. His daughter wrote and directed the film, adapting Jeffrey Eugenides’s novel. And there is a third Coppola credit to look for off the feature. Sofia and her brother Roman directed the video for Playground Love, the Air song Criterion includes among the extras. Eleanor’s film is the one to start with if you want to see the cast and crew while they were doing the work. The music video is there if you want to hear how the band’s part in the movie carries over into another piece.

The film stars Dunst as Lux Lisbon and Josh Hartnett as Trip Fontaine. James Woods and Kathleen Turner play the sisters’ parents. That is the cast list. The story gives the boys from the neighborhood much of the telling. They look back at five sisters they were fascinated by, and their memories shape what the viewer gets to see. It’s worth pausing over that arrangement on a second viewing. A boy can remember exactly how a room looked and still be wrong about the person who was in it.

If you have time for two extras

Pick Eleanor’s documentary and Lick the Star, the short Sofia directed in 1998. They put two parts of the same period next to each other: a filmmaker at work on a feature and one of her own short films. Criterion also lists a director-approved restoration, supervised by the original cinematographer Ed Lachman, with the score by Air. The extras are the reason to look for that edition specifically. AFI’s recommendation points to a streaming finder, so check there if you want to see where the feature is available in your region.

When we wrote about Giant, a detail on an oil truck led back to one of the film’s makers. This time the making-of film is right there in the release. AFI’s new post recalls its 2020 festival tribute to Sofia Coppola. Eleanor’s footage takes you to an earlier moment, when it was still possible to walk onto that set and see a first-time feature director at work.