This month is all about discovering new blogs, meeting new friends, and spreading the word about the launch of my young adult novel, MY SOON-TO-BE SEX LIFE, (Bloomsbury Spark, June 2014) by participating in this mega, 26 posts blog challenge.
Since Charlie, the main character in my novel, is an aspiring screenwriter who has plotted her own devirginization campaign - one that doesn't go as scripted - I thought an appropriate theme for this month would be: an alphabetical romp through the good, the bad, the ugly, and the downright scary representations of virginity in film. Warning - be prepared for adult content / strong language if you follow my posts this month.
Join me over the next 26 days for some swoonworthy and/or cringeworthy cherry popper moments on the big screen. Check out the multitude of amazing A to Z bloggers via the challenge main page, HERE. And don't forget to enter the GIVEAWAY at the end of this post!
V is for The Virgin Suicides (1999)
The Virgin Suicides is based on the 1993 novel by Jeffrey Eugenides and was adapted for film by the director, Sophia Coppola, daughter of Francis Ford Coppola. (Sophia Coppola also wrote and directed Lost in Translation, another of my favourite films.) Set in the 70s, this dark and nostalgic tale takes a haunting look at a "first time", first love, first infatuation, first heartbreak that turned out to be a tragic last.
The premise: "A group of male friends become obsessed with five mysterious sisters who are sheltered by their strict, religious parents."
Great line: "We knew that they knew everything about us, and that we couldn't fathom them at all."
Great tagline: "Beautiful, mysterious, haunting, invariably fatal. Just like life."
Overall thoughts: Here's an excerpt from Roger Eberts' 2000 review: "The worship the girls receive from the neighborhood boys confuses them: If they are perfect, why are they seen as such flawed and dangerous creatures? And then the reality of sex, too young, peels back the innocent idealism and reveals its secret engine, which is animal and brutal, lustful and contemptuous.
In a way, the Lisbon girls and the neighborhood boys never existed, except in their own adolescent imaginations. They were imaginary creatures, waiting for the dream to end through death or adulthood. "Cecilia was the first to go," the narrator tells us right at the beginning. We see her talking to a psychiatrist after she tries to slash her wrists. "You're not even old enough to know how hard life gets," he tells her. "Obviously, doctor," she says, "you've never been a 13-year-old girl." No, but his profession and every adult life is to some degree a search for the happiness she does not even know she has."
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