The unreliable narration of The Virgin Suicides (Sofía Coppola, 1999)

Unreliable narration is a long-standing tradition in literary studies, yet it has not received sufficient attention within the field of film studies—particularly from semiotic and narratological frameworks. According to Booth (1983), unreliable narration in cinema is the result of a discord between a narrative voice—the one orally weaving the story— and the images through which the fictional world is constructed. This disparity may range from the most overt contradiction to tiny discrepancies, from a complete lack of insight to minor lapses. From this perspective, The Virgin Suicides, based on the novel of the same name by Jeffrey Eugenides, is an ideal work for exploring unreliable narration and for elucidating the extent to which this narrative technique can be deployed through meticulous textual strategies to produce a confrontation between the oral account and the visual representation of events within the diegesis. 

Unlike the numerous analyses undertaken by genre studies—Bolton, 2011; Monden, 2013; Backman Rogers, 2015, 2019; Cook, 2021, we carry out a reading from a narratological perspective, in which there is an entity that, named as mega-narrator or great imaginer, and situated outside the diegesis, articulates the whole textual structure of the work, and consequently its effects and meanings, through which a discourse is created. This mega-narrator or great imaginer may delegate the task of narration upon a character with or without a defined identity, with participation or not in the accounted events, and whose location may or may not be specified in diegetic terms. Thus, the diegetic universe is shaped in the light of these oral interventions. As scenes and sequences evolve, and from a coherent juxtaposition with the images, these interventions intend to clarify the overall meaning of the story.

Even so, this fictional framework is sustained by three levels of representation: staging (the content of the image), framing (the types of shots and camera movements) and sequencing (the narrative arrangement of the images) (Cassetti & di Chio, 1991: 124-183). The unreliable narration emerges when elements at any of the three levels of representation conflict with the voice-over commentaries. These discrepancies between the visual and auditory dimensions prompt an interpretative process through which semantic aspects that challenge or contradict the narrative voice are identified. 

This dynamic unfolds The Virgin Suicides, where four vectors of meaning emerge to counterbalance the voice of an anonymous narrator. This narrator, speaking in first-person plural, recounts the suicide of the five teenage sisters in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, during the mid-1970s. Though his identity remains concealed, he identifies as one of the boys who were mesmerized by the sisters’ beauty. Now, from a retrospective vantage point, he attempts to reconstruct the events. Despite his inability to fully explain the motivations behind the sisters’ suicides, the four interpretive strategies employed by the mega-narrator offer insights that illuminate the mystery. At the same time, these strategies expose the narrator’s failure to grasp the ideological foundations underpinning his perspective and the socio-cultural context he inhabits.

These four areas of meaning are: the stereotyping that shapes the portrayal of the four sisters in accordance with the visual conventions of the era; the irony that emerges in response to the absurdity revealed by adult behavior; a lack of communication that renders the residents of the suburban neighborhood where the story unfolds as abstract entities; and the sense of decay emanating from the masculine epitome of the collective narrator—a once-idolized figure in his youth whose failure reflects that of the very individuals unified by the collective voice.

In summary, what can be inferred from the narrative voice of The Virgin Suicides in the light of the four strategies analyzed is the masculine characters are individuals doomed to return again and again to a past that is evoked nostalgically, but they are kept in ignorance. In fact, they are incapable of recognizing the sociocultural forces that underpinned the suicide of the five sisters, which highlight their mental limitations in understanding the events of the past. 

References

Backman Rogers, A. (2015). American Independent Cinema: Rites of Passage and the Crisis Image. Edinburgh University Press. 

Backman Rogers, A. (2019). Sofia Coppola: The Politics of Visual Pleasure. Berghahn. 

Bolton, L. (2011). Film and Female Consciousness: Irigaray, Cinema and Thinking Women. Palgrave. 

Booth, W. (1983). The Rethoric of Fiction. The University of Chicago Press.

Cassetti, F., y di Chio, F. (1991). Cómo analizar un film. Paidós.

Cook, P. (2021, 22 de octubre). Portrait of a lady: Sofia Coppola and Marie Antoinette. https://bit.ly/3FNjQMK

Gaudreault, A., y Jost, F. (1995). El relato cinematográfico. Paidós. 

Gómez Tarín, F. J. (2013). El punto de vista en el audiovisual contemporáneo: una reformulación de conceptos enunciativos y narrativos. En M. Álvarez (Ed.), Imágenes conscientes. AutorrepresentacioneS#2 (pp. 27-45). Éditions Orbis Tertius. 

Monden, M. (2013). Contemplating in a dream-like room: The Virgin Suicides and the aesthetic imagination of girlhood. Film, Fashion & Consumption, 2(2), 139-158. https://doi.org/10.1386/ffc.2.2.139_1

Filmography

Coppola, S. (Director). (1999). The Virgin Suicides [Film]. American Zoetrope; Muse Productions; Eternity Pictures.