"The Virgin Suicides" is based on the 1993 best selling debut novel of the same name by the American author Jeffrey Eugenides. The film follows the lives of five adolescent sisters, in an upper-middle-class suburb of Detroit during the late 1970s. After the youngest sister, Cecilia, makes an initial attempt at suicide, all of the girls are put under close scrutiny by their parents, eventually being confined to their home, which leads to their increasingly depressive and isolated behavior. As in the novel, the film is told in first person plural, from the perspective of a group of adolescent boys in the neighbourhood who are fascinated by the girls.