Test Images of Kirsten Dunst Taken for “The Virgin Suicides” (1999)

Test images of Kirsten Dunst taken for The Virgin Suicides in 1998. Dunst’s performance in the film kicked off her long working relationship with director Sofia Coppola. “In Kirsten I saw the real essence of the character and the film I wanted to make.”

For the part of Lux Lisbon, Coppola auditioned numerous actresses, but had a “gut choice” of Kirsten Dunst, who was sixteen years old at the time of her casting. Reflecting on the role, Dunst said: “I was nervous. It was my first role that was more of a ‘sexy’ thing. I was also unsure about how large the role was gonna be, because a lot of it was without dialogue. When I met Sofia, I immediately knew that she would handle it in a delicate way... [she] really brought out the luminous aspect of the girls; she made them like ethereal angels, almost like they weren’t really there.”

The Virgin Suicides was filmed in the summer of 1998 in Toronto, Ontario, standing in for suburban Detroit, Michigan, on a reported budget of $6 million. The shoot lasted roughly one month.

Coppola was inspired by photographer Takashi Homma’s photos of suburban Japan when choosing the filming locations; “I have always been struck by the beauty of banal details,” she said, “and that is what suburban style is all about.” The film’s occasional use of stills and collages was intended to evoke the “fantasia” of adolescence. Cinematographer Edward Lachman shot the film. Coppola’s brother, Roman Coppola, was the second-unit director on the film.