Movie Journal | The Burden Of The Protected Child

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Directed by Sofia Coppola

I just finished The Virgin Suicides two nights ago, and it left me in a melancholic mood. I am haunted by the hazy atmosphere of the movie, the dreamlike portrayal, and the isolation of the Lisbon girls, as well as the way the boys next door narrate and recall the girls and their tragic ending.

The boys’ narration reminds me that memory can be both tender and cruel, most especially to me! They describe the girls in a way that makes them appear hauntingly mysterious, almost mythical, and I found myself perceiving them as angels suspended in time.


Lux Lisbon’s eyes, as seen through the boys’ memories, embody this paradox. Their gaze freezes the sisters into symbols of beauty and longing rather than full human beings. The girls were denied the chance to live ordinary lives, and in the boys’ recollections, they are denied the chance to be understood deeply.

The Lisbon parents believed they were protecting their daughters by shielding them from the dangers of the outside world. But protection without trust becomes a cage. Mrs. Lisbon pulled the girls out of school after Lux missed their curfew during their prom (or was it homecoming?). They stripped them not only of education but of community and freedom. What they called safety was, in truth, suffocation. To be “protected” in this way is to be erased. The tragedy of the Lisbon sisters is not only their deaths, but the slow, suffocating erasure that preceded them.

The film lingers because it asks us to confront the cost of strict and fear-driven parenting, the silence of suburban repression, and the way nostalgia can romanticize pain. It is not just about the Lisbon girls, it is about the burden carried by any child who is “protected” to the point of invisibility. The story forces me to wonder: when does care become control, and when does protection become possession?

In the end, The Virgin Suicides is less about answers and more about haunting questions. It leaves us with the ache of memory, the weight of longing, and the reminder that to truly protect someone is to trust them with their own life.

And in the end of it all, the girls remain forever enigmatic, trapped in the narrator's nostalgia.




-E. 


Photo source: Pinterest

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