What the heck is this movie about?

The sheer fact that you called her a '13 year old bitch' makes me doubt the fact that you even truly watched the movie. For someone who too was slightly confused initially, I never once thought of Cecilia in that regard.

The whole feel of the movie is, it is a story told in retrospect, with memories and what little information they had.

Having the older Trip Fontaine is as someone mentioned to give further insight into an event he couldn't possibly have explained at the time of the memories because as the movie tells you - he and Lux never spoke again. Therefore, your reasoning about the inability to cast a different actor to play a young character at an older age, is void.

It was probably a small comfort to have an interaction with someone before the end. I don't honestly believe they did it with malicious intent, they could have been uncertain as to whether they really wanted to commit suicide and by the time the boys had come over, it had already been done. *shrug*

It's hard to explain an open ended movie. Most of the time your own interpretation won't make sense to others, because there are so many ways of interpreting it. The way I saw it was, you can't protect your kids from everything. That's what it seemed like their parents (namely their mother) tried to do, and it ended badly. They were very socially awkward, that I could tell, but once they did have the opportunity to spend an extended period of time with the boys, they were fine. Lux acted like a normal teen, in excess, because of her stifling upbringing and home life. That's just one reaction to that kind of upbringing and they each react differently. Until....they can't take anymore and all kill themselves.

It makes you wonder so many different things. The extent of depression. How the most fleeting meetings can affect your life forever. How compelling mystery can be. How crucial that stage of a child's life is (which is funny because towards the end, at the debutante ball, that adult seems to make fun of the whole situation by falling into the pool, mocking their suicide. I found that insensitive.) A true tragedy has a occurred, but all people can do is gossip and speculate, rather than try to help. And so five young lives are lost. And five more lives are forever affected by those lives and the loss.

It's a tough one. The most simple things and decisions, have the strangest reactions and affect more people than you could ever imagine. It's like watching the story of a ripple effect.

...R.I.P Michael Joseph Jackson...
...R.I.P Heathcliff Andrew Ledger...

This is about the mystery of women. To those who know how to read french, here's an interesting study on the subject: http://www.er.uqam.ca/nobel/m102360/requiem/Virgin_Suicides.pdf
I liked the movie, I read the study, and I re-watched it, and I adore it now.

Just read the novel

its directly from a book.

I agree with the OP.

Their parents were NOT that bad. Strict? Sure. Not even close to making me believe that they provided an environment so stifling that it would lead to suicide. What bothered me the most though is that maybe I COULD believe that the girls had it bad if I ever saw them acting sad, upset, or miserable but they're always totally normal/happy or indifferent at their worst (minus the scene where Lux was crying over having to burn her vinyl-- but hey, I would be too. Ha.) My point is that these girls never seemed troubled and suddenly they kill themselves.

Another thing I'd like to point out is that they had each other to lean on. Yeah, they lost a sister and had overbearing parents but you'd think they'd rally around each other and realize and take advantage of having SOME company, even if you're under house arrest and taken out of school because of your nutty mother.

But I watched this movie last night and I felt like I "got" it more than in previous viewings. A lot of posters are right that it's the boys' view we're getting. But moreso than that, it's about fantasy and nostalgia and retrospect. It's a glimpse of those moments that happen in life that feel unreal and end too soon and leave you wondering if they even happened or if there was a purpose. It's about being infatuated with people you hardly know, who leave your life before you can get near them, and in the end you can't stop rehashing the details or the memories or the artifacts of the time. I can ABSOLUTELY relate to this and for me, it trumps the frustrations this movie otherwise brings up.

If you want the meta answer - this movie is about Sofia Coppola practicing writing and direction :-) It was her first flick and her dad (Francis, who was producer and running the show) is the one who should have known much better and made her work much harder and longer on the script. She basically got overwhelmed and instead of cutting, concentrating and intensifying whatever was in the book she became diluted and scattered.

To turn this kind of story into intense and believable flick she needed to take a few pages out of De Palma's "Carrie" and portray a psychotic and unstable Catholic mother. It's doable with just a few well placed details and short scenes. If you saw that, most other things would fit in quite well. If Kathleen Turner wasn't able to deliver that, there were plenty of other actresses eager to jump in on a Francis Ford Coppola project.

I'd venture a bet that if Tarantino is still in love with her, Sofia is bound to learn a few good tricks about intensifying a flick. To her (small) credit she did pay her bills with her first flick but didn't make a splash she hoped for.

I regard this movie as an around-the-camp-fire story. As if a group of guys had decided to share stories from their high-school past. I don’t know about you, but thinking about my school days I notice that girls always seemed to be ahead of us. They were out of reach for the normal guy, only duchebags interested them. And when we average guys were finally getting mature enough to get into these girls’ minds, the chance was gone, they were gone. Like dead, if we may say so.
As I see it, the suicides are just a mystifying element, like ghosts or urban legends. But they serve as a metaphor for the coming of age, that moment when girls do the jump out of your childhood life and disappear into the adult worl forever. Chances gone. Mind that the first to go is Cecilia, whom is clearly the most mature of the Lisbon girls.
So, trying to answer question #1, the future Trip Fontaine is just to prove distance. Trip was a duche back then, and seemed cool. He is still a duche in the future and the coolness is gone.
As for question #2, the farewell party is just how tortured guys feel about their past.
If you accept the suicides as just an image, there is no big mystery except for girls’ souls.

If you want to take a look at an even more disturbing interpretation of coming of age girls and scare legends, just watch Picnic at Hanging Rock http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073540/ . Same subject, and much more haunting.

lost of innocence.