USA,
1999, 97 min
Shown in 2000
CREDITS
- dir
-
Sofia Coppola
- prod
-
Francis Ford Coppola, Julie Costanzo
- scr
-
Sofia Coppola
- cam
-
Edward Lachman
- editor
-
Melissa Kent, Jim Lyons
- cast
-
James Woods, Kathleen Turner, Kirsten Dunst, Josh Hartnett
- source
-
Paramount Classics, 5555 Melrose Ave., Hollywood, CA 90038-3197. FAX: 323-862-1103
-
COMMENTS
Shown as the Opening Night feature.
OTHER
Remarkably rescuing adolescence from its usual celluloid domain of American pies and fart jokes, Sofia Coppola’s directorial debut unveils the melancholy elements generally overlooked by the teen genre—desperation, longing, obsession and that wrecked moment at the edge of youth when hope for the future warps into nostalgia for the past. In an ordinary suburban house, on a tree-lined street, under an ever-shining sun and amidst a slow-motion reverie, live the five beautiful, dreamy Lisbon sisters, aged 13 to 17. To the neighborhood boys these girls are far more than human. They live in sweetness and light, at least for a time, unsullied by their religiously protective mother or disconnected math-teacher father. Only fragments of their lives touch reality—a party, the school prom or a courtship with Tripp Fontaine, the school stud—the rest remains locked away, dreamed about and obsessed over until one fateful, shocking night when the boys’ fantasies finally awaken to the baffling, hidden reality of teenage girls. Adapted from the acclaimed novel by Jeffrey Eugenides, Sofia Coppola’s film displays with assurance its comical moments of goofy teen awkwardness and 1970s suburban cluelessness. Her most astounding feat, however, is going beyond the expected genre conventions, to discover and courageously reveal a romantic, at times mythic power.
—Jason Sanders
FACTOID #33
French New Wave actress Jeanne Moreau’s 1974 Festival tribute, called “a veritable orgy” for her fans by the Examiner’s Stanley Eichelbaum, included screenings of four films (The Lovers, Jules and Jim, Bay of Angels and Diary of a Chambermaid), an onstage interview with Moreau and an additional two hours of clips. Running nine to 11 hours (depending on the source), the tribute was the longest recorded at the Festival.
