'VIRGIN' DIRECTOR'S TRIUMPH.

Byline: Rob Lowman Entertainment Editor

With a title like ``The Virgin Suicides,'' you might expect a grim ponderous screed. But as its director, Sofia Coppola, says, ``It's not as much of a downer as it sounds.''

And indeed it's not. The story about five beautiful sisters growing up in a small, affluent Michigan town in the 1970s who take their lives for unknown reasons is a visually lush exploration of the mysteries of adolescence that can be as light and airy and funny as it is emotionally telling.

``The Virgin Suicides'' arrived on video and DVD this week.

Based on the novel of the same name by Jeffrey Eugenides, the filmconfronts the stifling atmosphere of suburbia with a sense of wonder.

``I liked the like the way (Eugenides) told the story, how he talked about mysteries in life,'' says Coppola. ``It was melancholy, but it was also funny.'' The teen years are ``romantic and epic times,'' she says.

Daughter of famed director Francis Ford Coppola (``The Godfather,'' ``Apocalypse Now''), Sofia Coppola says she's always been drawn to the visual. ``I went to school to study painting, and I wanted to do something in that direction. That's why I'm not as articulate talking about it,'' she jokes. ``But that's the part that interested me the most. And I love photographs and that's what kind of got me into being interested in film.''

Nevertheless, despite dismissing the dialogue in the film as ``not being that much'' and being a visual person, Coppola wrote the script. Asked if she relied on her own memories of her teen years during the process, the 29-year-old Coppola says that she remembers what it was like to have huge crushes. ``It's a period where everything is new,'' she says.

Coppola says casting was critical to the film. ``I wanted great actors for the parents so they just wouldn't be cartoon characters,'' she says. ``James Woods and Kathleen Turner are actors that I admire.''

She says that Turner, who had starred in her father's film ``Peggy Sue Got Married,'' had ``no vanity'' about playing the girls' strict mother. ``I felt that she brought some sympathy to someone who could be a complete villain.''

As for Woods, Coppola thought that he made that character lovable. ``He's so smart and charming,'' she says. ``That character was more of a boor before he go involved. I was grateful for that.''

Another key in casting was for the role of Lux, the blond ``Lolita'' of the sisters, who is the object of desire for the boys in the neighborhood. Coppola says that she was ``lucky'' in getting Kirsten Dunst, who she hadn't seen until shortly before shooting began. It's her aliveness that makes the sisters' waltz toward death particularly poignant.

As for taking on her father's profession, especially when your father is revered in the cinema world, Coppola says she wasn't intimidated.

``When it's your first time doing something, you have this bravery about jumping in because you don't really know how hard it is. I was just too excited about the project to think about what it was I was getting into it,'' she says. ``Maybe next time it will be more daunting.''

And after her visually lyrical debut with ``The Virgin Suicides,'' Coppola, who is writing her own script, only has live up to her own accomplishments - not her dad's.

``The Virgin Suicides'' (Paramount) is $29.99 on DVD and includes a making of documentary and ``Playground Love'' music video by air. It's priced for rental on VHS at $95.99.

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Kirsten Dunst stars as the alluring Lux in the tale about a tight clan of sisters whose deaths haunt their town in ``The Virgin Suicides,'' now on video and DVD.