ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 gives a reading of Sofia Coppola’s 1999 film The Virgin Suicides, an adaptation of the 1993 novel by Jeffrey Eugenides. The chapter considers The Virgin Suicides alongside other nostalgia films, and asks whether Jameson’s critique of the nostalgia film adequately accounts for the evident nostalgia of The Virgin Suicides. The chapter will explore the ‘teenage’ as a privileged site of nostalgic longing. It will consider this teenage nostalgia in light of the long-standing association of nostalgia with childhood, and ask: What is the quality of the teenage ‘forever’ that the nostalgia in The Virgin Suicides taps into? What particular hopes are stored therein, and how do they differ from those provoked by childhood nostalgia?
