culture
Reel Toronto: The Virgin Suicides
Toronto’s extensive work on the silver screen reveals that, while we have the chameleonic ability to look like anywhere from New York City to Moscow, the disguise doesn’t always hold up to scrutiny. Reel Toronto revels in digging up and displaying the films that attempt to mask, hide, or—in rare cases—proudly display our city.
The Virgin Suicides established that Sofia Coppola wasn’t just the girl blamed for ruining The Godfather: Part III but was, in fact, capable of directing actual films, like her dad’s. Perhaps to ease into her new profession, she came to Toronto to shoot this period piece, based on the book by Jeffrey Eugenides.
The Virgin Suicides wasn’t made all that long ago, but it’s long enough that between the time that’s passed, the period-pieceness, and how Coppola uses the largely suburban-style locales, there’s not a tonne of Toronto to spot. Where’s the Distillery District? Couldn’t the R.C. Harris Filtration Plant be shoehorned into the plot somewhere?
We’ll start by admitting that we’re not sure of perhaps the most prominent location, the Lisbon family home. We thought the number, 2037, might be a clue but, no, that’s just the number of the house from the book. But you remember them shooting it on your street, right?
Nearly as important is the school the girls attend. The interiors…
..and exteriors were done at Monarch Park Collegiate, near the Danforth.
Hey, it’s future Darth Vader dude Hayden Christensen! We’ve already seen him as a little kid, so we should be able to do enough of these to watch every stage of his development.
Here’s Kirsten Dunst hanging out on the field at the old Varsity Stadium.
And you can’t have a film with “suicides” in the title without some kind of cemetery, right? This one is St. John’s Norway, out on Kingston Road. It’s a popular filming location, used in flicks like Cocktail.
By her second film, Sofia Coppola would be in Tokyo, landing Oscar nominations and all that, but subsequent trips to Versailles and Hollywood haven’t made quite the same impact, so maybe it’s time to come back and remember where it all started, eh, Sofia?
We know we can always count on y’all, so props to reader David Waugh for quickly pointing us to the house’s actual location on Dunloe Road, in Forest Hill. You can see it here. And now that we know where it is, we were somewhat amused to note that the house next door cameos as the house across the street. Thanks!