Does Sofia Coppola have a film you just can't refuse?

She's the Godfather's daughter and is married to film-maker Spike Jonze. BOB TOURTELLOTTE talks to Sofia Coppola about her debut as a director.

What is a young woman director to do? Her father is a living legend in Hollywood and her husband was Oscar-nominated for his first movie.

Sofia Coppola's debut film, The Virgin Suicides, about the disillusionment of five teenage sisters in 1970s suburbia, opens in New Zealand cinemas next week and she knows audiences will think her first break into the movies came only because of her dad, Francis Ford Coppola.

Or they may think her husband, Spike Jonze, whose Being John Malkovich earned him the Oscar nod last year, pulled some studio executive's strings on behalf of his wife.

Coppola is smart enough to know expectations for her movie may be too high because of her family ties, and savvy enough to understand why some people in Hollywood might enjoy seeing Suicides flop.

"I'm sure there are sceptics, but I hope people will go to the movie and look at it for what it is and forget about my family and all that other stuff," she said.

They may decide to go because of complimentary advance reviews. But it is hard not to consider family when watching the movie, which charts the unpredictable course of the Lisbon family, and even harder not to think about Coppola's connections when "written by" and "directed by" appear in front of her name during the credits.

Coppola, nearing 30, did not start out to direct movies and she did not sit down to adapt the novel The Virgin Suicides into a film. In fact, when she started the screenplay she did not even own the rights to it.

Until then, making movies had not been on her agenda. Photography, publishing and fashion design consumed her early and mid-20s and she did not want to be like her father. In short, she had a good old-fashioned case of teen rebellion.

"It's because of my dad that kept me from saying, 'I want to be a director,"' she said. "I really didn't know what I wanted to do so I tried a lot of different things."

But she was never far from the movies, with acting roles in Peggy Sue Got Married and The Godfather, Part III and costume design for the Life with Zoe segment of New York Stories and the 1989 film The Spirit of'76.

Because she feels "anything creative is related to many creative things," it is little wonder she finally got around to directing a short film, Lick the Star, about the lives of teenage girls and the secrets they share.

American movie fans who catch Lick the Star, which airs regularly on cable TV's Independent Film Channel, can see why she chose it for her first film project before she even secured the rights to make The Virgin Suicides.

"I liked the way Suicides [the book] was about being that age in a way that was just so clean and attractive and funny," she said. "It wasn't condescending to kids."

In the early to mid-1970s most girls wore bell-bottom jeans and platform shoes, polyester shirts and halter tops, long hair and feathered bangs - most, that is.

The five Lisbon sisters of Suicides, each a beautiful young woman, wore ankle-length dresses and lived under the constant supervision of an overprotective mom (Kathleen Turner) and a henpecked dad (James Woods).

Their cloistered lives gave them an air of mystery for the neighbourhood boys, who only glimpsed them through cracked window blinds, binoculars and boyhood rumours. To the guys, they represented all that was unknown and hopeful about romance, love and the future.

It is only after one Lisbon girl dies and another, Lux (Kirsten Dunst), becomes romantically involved with high school stud Trip Fontaine (Josh Hartnet), that the boys finally meet the Lisbons first hand.

Despite its title, Suicides is less about death than it is about the loss of youthful innocence. But the problem for any Hollywood movie studio is that a movie with suicide in the title might spell death at the box-office.

So there is a catch to Coppola's story: her father did help to get the film made. He wanted his company, American Zoetrope, to return to independent film-making and Suicides was an effort in that direction.

But to make the film, Sofia Coppola wrote her script first, then obtained rights to the novel. The "couple of million" dollars it cost to make Suicides came from preselling overseas distribution, a common practice in the indie world.

On its own, Suicides shows a sense of style and craft that comes only through talent and work. Sofia Coppola is not her father or her husband and she does not need to be.

"You know certain people from having your family in the business and it's helpful," she said. "It opens doors but then you really have to come through."

Just as she spent her early and mid-20s distancing herself from her dad, she now tries to dispel notions that she is a "snob" or "lazy" or that "you have things handed to you."

Her thoughts turn to competition because sitting around the family dinner table with the talent in the Coppola family can be intimidating. Her cousin, Oscar-winning actor Nicholas Cage, changed his name from Coppola to stake out his own identity.

"But it's healthy," Sofia Coppola said with a smile. "There's a healthy amount of competition."

She snickers the second time she says healthy, adding that she thinks she will be directing films for a while. She kicked other endeavours around and now she feels she is launching into a career she can call her own, even if she does have to share the name.REUTERS

*The Virgin Suicides opens in cinemas on Thursday, February 1.