MovieChat Forums > The Virgin Suicides (2000) Discussion > Why did Lux asked the boys to come in to...

Why did Lux asked the boys to come in to the house?


One boy asked Lux where are her sisters, and she said they're coming.
And she asked the boys to come in to the house and the boys found out that they were dead.
Why? Did she not know that her sisters were dead? If so, why did she said that they're coming and she asked the boys to come in to the house? Is she trying to scare them? I really don't understand.

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[deleted]

Lux wanted the boys over the house because each of them wanted to commit suicide in a different way, and Lux wanted to die in a car, so she ask the boys over,and invite them in so that while they were in the house waiting for her sisters, she can be in their car committing suicide.



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^That doesn't quite make sense, as Lux killed herself in her parents' car (parked in their garage), not the car the boys brought.

I always thought it was because the girls wanted somebody to find their bodies, other than their parents. It was their only way of being 'found' by the outside world, their only way of escaping the prison their parents kept them in. Sort of like a final hurrah.



The mirror... it's broken.
Yes, I know. I like it that way. Makes me look the way I feel.

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I think it was the second time the boys came over to help them sneak out, the first time they did that, they cruised around the town till morning.

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The scene of them driving in the car never happened--this is what the boys imagined would happen after they left that night.

Never settle with words what you can accomplish with a flamethrower.

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Thanks I always wondered about that. Was that Mary that kissed her date goodbye in the car. She turned down the alcohol at the dance. It's too bad the movie ended so sadly, she seemed to really like her date and vice versa.

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The narrator said Mary's date never called her, although he had promised to.


I am Jack's IMDb post.

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That was Bonnie. But yes, the rest of the above was true.

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Actually, it was Therese, but anyhow...

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In reality it was Cecilia.

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Boopee doopee doop boop SEX

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Don't be asinine. We're clearly talking about the film, and I just gave everyone the right answer.

If they're confused, it could because of the massive date "switch-a-roo", between the film and the book, which completely changes not only who the other dates are besides Trip, but which of them was paired with each remaining sister.

So let me break this down from the time the car drops off the sisters (minus Lux), until the time we find out Jake/Joe Hill Conley doesn't call Therese (in the film), and Bonnie (in the book) as he had promised.


From the film:

Therese: [Leaning into the car] Will you call me?

Jake Hill Conley: Uhh...Absolutely. [Kisses her on her left cheek]


...later...

Narrator: Given Lux's failure to make curfew, everyone expected a crackdown, but few anticipated it would be so drastic.


...later...

Narrator: For the next few weeks we hardly saw the girls at all. Joe* Hill Conley didn't call Therese as he had promised, and Lux never spoke to Trip again.


* I've listened to this repeatedly, and while they changed the name of this character to "Jake Hill Conley", the narrator and/or scriptwriters have slipped up, and neglected to change it from the "Joe Hill Conley" (as per the the book it was adapted from), in this particular section of the film.

Yes folks. We have a certified goof.


From the book:

Bonnie whispered into Joe Hill Conley's ear, "Will you call me?"

"Absolutely."


...and later...

Given Lux's failure to make curfew, everyone expected a crackdown, but few anticipated it would be so drastic.


...and later...

For the next few weeks we hardly saw the girls at all. Lux never spoke to Trip Fontaine again, nor did Joe Hill Conley call Bonnie, as he had promised.


I should thank you for being a smart arse. In my quest for quote mining, I found a nice goof.

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Mary's date was too busy to call. He had a Jedi Order to slay, an Empire to support. A wife to betray. Younglings to slay.

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The one who turned down alcohol at the dance was Bonnie. She went to the dance with "Parkie" Denton, and also gave him a kiss on the cheek before quickly scampering out of the car.

He was there because he was the one with access to his father's Cadillac. Furthermore, he's the only boy in the group who is amongst the group of secret voyeurs, who try to keep the memory of the Lisbon sister's alive...tries to contact them during their home incarceration...and naively participates in the escape plan on the night the girls decide to kill themselves.

It was sad. He seemed nice, and like he genuinely cared about Bonnie and her sisters.

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They clearly wanted to leave an emotional impact on the boys. I feel like the impact was negative and positive in that it was traumatic, and it left the boys always looking upon the memory of the girls with fondness. I think this is consistent with the experiences the girls and the boys shared. At the get-together at the house, I think the boys left a bad impression with the way they were making fun of Joe, and perhaps a positive impression as well when they tried to reach out to the girls after they were imprisoned in their home. The girls obviously wanted the boys to always remember them, but I can't think of any other times throughout the film or in the vinyl song lyrics where always being remembered was a theme.

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I always thought it was because they were the ones over when Cecilia committed suicide at the start. Almost like they were going out the same way. The party decorations were still up and everything, like time was standing still and they wanted that connection to their sister. That was my interpretation.

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Them is a book written by Joyce Carrol Oates in the late sixties about a working class family struggling in 1950's Detroit. A good portion of the book is given to the teenaged kids, but with its lack of sentimentality that even The Virgin Suicides with its tragic subject matter manages to muster, I hesitate to call it a coming of age story.

I'm bringing it up here because it's the only other book besides The Virgin Suicides I can remember that Grosse Pointe figures relevantly in. More precisely, the teenaged boy becomes obsessed with a girl he first laid eyes on as she exited a blue station wagon in the driveway of a Grosse Pointe mansion. Three months later he introduces himself in a brief conversation with her on the Wayne State campus, and shortly thereafter drives to her family's mansion in a floral delivery truck, forcing his presence on her in her bedroom. Within what must've been less than an hour of his intrusion he has premonitions of their madness as she begins pleading that they should run away to Mexico together and pretend to be married, threatening suicide in passing if he didn't. (You won't come close to inferring the storyline by reading the above, it's not a spoiler.)

The couple in Them are still recovering from adolescence at seventeen, but running away impulsively, morbidly lovestruck, with a stranger isn't what you'd expect at any age. Therese was seventeen, too.

The Lisbon sisters' ruse, drawing the boys to their house with the lie that they would all run away together could very well have been an oblique allusion to Them. If I were one of the boys invited to the suicides, and had later read Them, the lie would have a hitherto unconsidered dimension, that of a sardonic criticism directed at a fictional book about me and mine. Suddenly running away with your dream girl you've worshipped from afar is pure fantasy for most teenaged boys; by saying goodbye with such finality at the moment the boys expected to journey new intimacies with them is the cold water dousing that brings the absurdity of their plan to light.

It was never said if any of them read the book, Them; if they did acknowledge it, it'd be like them breaking the 4th wall,as they do on tv, and admitting they're literary conceits meant to criticize (or pay homage to) another book. It would seem omniscent of them even if thre've been fictional characters in the past who've been under the sway of a book. I dunno.(Read into it what you will, Motown* isn't anywhere to be found in the book either.)

Them is the Joyce Carrol Oates book most widely read. Her name hadn't registered for me until relatively recently; in a movie's dialogue (a woman says her work made her orgasmic), and a movie adaptation of one of her other books. Maybe the suicidal runaway teen girl is a trope endemic to characters from affluent neighborhoods, in this case, both The Virgin Suicides and Them, from Grosse Pointe. I find antecedents, sometimes tenuous (spurious?) ones, too often, to the detriment of my credibility, but for me, this one holds more water than most.

Afterthought: It wouldn't surprise me if Joyce Carrol Oates was an influence of Sofia Coppola's.

* Motown is mentioned around page 136-ish.
[quote]It's the same music we pass by on the radio, in between the Motown and rock and roll, a beacon of light in a world of darkness, and totally *beep*

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Motown is mentioned page 136-ish.

It's the same music we pass by on the radio, in between the Motown and rock and roll, a beacon of light in a world of darkness, and totally *beep*


As far as the soundtrack, Al Green wasn't with Motown.

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A lot of people conflate artists like Al Green and Aretha plus Philly Soul with "Motown." Music heads know the difference, but I don't blame anyone for lumping it all together.

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I think the girls knew they had an effect on the boys; they wanted to show them that even though they looked perfect and mysterious and amazing, they were all severely damaged. It was a wake up call for the boys and it never left them.

++++++
Love means never having to say you're ugly. - The Abominable Dr. Phibes

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In reality we won't know why lux asked them to come in the house. It is never explained and up to our own interpretation. Simple as that.

I think someone had it right when they said They wanted to be found by someone other than their parents...Maybe so they would live on in the story telling of future kids. Almost like a urban legend in the neighborhood or something.

👽

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Based on what happened in the film, and not the book, because I never read the book or heard about it before this film, I think girls invited those boys to confirm that they were indeed committing suicide and it was not an accident. Remember, when the youngest sister died the cause of death was claimed to be an accident, plus nobody really saw what happened to Cecilia Lisbon.

Her death should've been a wake up call for parents, especially the mother but instead they accepted it as an accident, for the show (removing the metal fencing) for neighbors or to convince themselves has been left a mystery. Therefore, the girls made sure that this time it's made as clear as possible by having an audience.

P.S. Sorry for bad English.

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Spoiler warning below:



What if this also never happened? It is obvious that their journey with the car was one of the dreams of the guys, but what if also the signalling using morse code, telephone calls etc are also dream? How come did not the girls' parents answer the telephone calls while they were playing songs to each other?

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