After Cecilia recovers, the family has a party for her to get her spirits up. Unfortunately, during the party, she succeeds in committing suicide by jumping out of the second floor window and landing on a metal fence spike. The invited friends at the party leave without saying a word, no doubt horrified by what they've seen.
This leaves the remaining four sisters trying to live a normal life. The movie focuses on Lex (Kirsten Dunst) who attracts the attention of fellow high school student Trip Fontaine (Josh Hartnett). At the start of the movie, Lex is 14. Perhaps by this time she's 15. Trip Fontaine is perhaps 16 or 17 and is on the high school football team. He asks her father (James Woods) -- who also happens to teach at the high school -- if he can take Lex out to the high school homecoming dance. The father seems to want to approve of the idea, but has to get an agreement from his wife (Kathleen Turner) as the family policy is not to allow their daughters to date at such a young age.
The wife agrees and all the daughters head to the dance together with dates. Trip and Lex end up winning homecoming king and queen. It really feels like the family has moved pass the suicide of Cecilia.
Then everything collapses. Trip convinces Lex to leave the dance. They end up having sex on the football field. For some reason, Trip just ends up leaving Lex there, walking home. Through flash forward scenes, Trip argues that he was deeply in love with Lex, but you really have to question that after seeing how he ditches Lex on that football field after having just had sex with her. Lex wakes up and is devastated. She arrives back home in the early morning hours and the parents over-react to the situation in a manner that honestly doesn't feel realistic. They pull all four sisters out of high school and ground them, apparently not letting them leave the confines of the property. Admittedly, the parents are strict Catholics, but one might see them grounding Lex, but all the sisters and for well over two weeks?
Restricted to just being able to communicate via phone and flashlights with some teenagers across the street, the four sisters decide to commit suicide like their sister Cecilia.
The movie comes from the memories of a now 40-ish man who communicated with those four sisters via the phone and flashlights. He is still struggling to piece together the life of the family. One piece of info we do learn is that Trip Fontaine eventually ends up institutionalized. Perhaps he just couldn't live with himself, knowing that he was directly tied to the suicide of four people.
You also witness the breakdown of the father, which occurs prior to the group suicide. Perhaps the father realizes his failings as a parent. After Cecilia committed suicide, he was very open to giving Lex more freedom to date. But once she broke the rules, he allowed his wife to impose extreme restrictions. Maybe he realized that he just didn't have the strength to go up against his wife even though he knew that it might lead to an unfortunate outcome.
Though obviously not the choice of Coppola, I wonder if the last name Lisbon was inspired by the 1755 Lisbon earthquake.
This movie showcases the under-stated tone that Coppola has taken in movies such as Lost in Translation and Somewhere. I don't think it is as good as those two movies where she no doubt polished this technique, but you do get to see the beginnings. In some ways, you can also see influences from the movie
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