Ghosts of Yestertears

THE VIRGIN SUICIDES

Sofia Coppola, 1999

You're probably looking at your keyboard to verify if T is beside Y. Yes, it is. And no, it's not a typo. I use yestertears every time I refer to not-so-happy things in the past, yet here they are crawling their way to the present just to haunt you.

That's what happens to the narrator in The Virgin Suicides, Sofia Coppola's stunning feature film debut. The film tackles the dilemma of angst-ridden adolescence, the downsides of being a girl, teenage sexuality, the anguish of yearning, and — of course — the complexity of suicide.

Fave Movie Moments: Forrest Gump

First day of school, young Forrest (Michael Conner Humphreys) is already bullied in the schoolbus because of his "otherness." His schoolmates refuse to give him a seat, saying:

"This sayt's tay-ken."

"It's tay-ken."

"You can't sit with us!" (Oops. Wrong film.)

Hoping somebody would be kind enough to offer him a seat, Forrest walks on by. Grumpy young faces here and there. Shaking their head and turning their eyes away from the new kid in school, these brats are determined to bully Forrest.

"You can't sit here!" One of the boys said.

And then a tiny mellifluous voice says to Forrest:

"You can sit here if you woant."

Fave Movie Moments: The Virgin Suicides

Sofia Coppola's feature film debut is a spellbinding adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides' most famous novel, The Virgin Suicides. Set during the '70s, The Virgin Suicides is about the life and death of the Lisbon sisters, the overprotected daughters of a devout Catholic couple in a middle-class Michigan suburb.

"Cecilia was the first to go," says the narrator as we stare at Cecilia's serene face, her daydreaming blue eyes staring at a place way beyond other people's reach.