The scenes in 'The Virgin Suicides' where Elle Fanning is ice

Host: The ice rink lay beneath a ceiling of flickering lights, their pale glow dripping onto the frozen surface like fragile stars caught in glass. The sound of skates scratching, cutting, and gliding filled the air, an orchestra of delicate chaos and grace.
It was almost midnight. Most of the skaters had gone home, leaving only the faint echo of music from the loudspeakers — a forgotten pop song that sounded both lonely and eternal.

Jack stood by the boards, his hands in his coat pockets, his breath misting in the cold. Jeeny was already on the ice, her scarf trailing like a small comet, her movements fluid, her eyes lit with something that belonged more to memory than to motion.

Jeeny: “You remember that scene, Jack? In The Virgin Suicides — when Elle Fanning skates across the ice?”

Host: Her voice drifted across the rink, soft and dreamlike, barely louder than the whisper of her blades against the ice.

Jack: “Yeah. Charli XCX mentioned it once. Said it was amazing.”

Jeeny: “It is. It’s not just about skating. It’s about the feeling of being alive — but trapped in something beautiful and cold.”

Host: Jack’s eyes followed her as she spun — a blur of white and dark, grace against desolation.

Jack: “You make it sound tragic.”

Jeeny: “It is tragic. That’s the point. It’s not the skating — it’s the way she doesn’t know the world’s already taken something from her.”

Host: The lights dimmed slightly, and a thin mist of cold air crept from the vents above. The rink seemed to breathe.

Jack: “You always find pain in beauty, Jeeny.”

Jeeny: “Because they’re married, Jack. You can’t have one without the other.”

Jack: “That’s poetic. But in real life, beauty is just marketing. A camera angle. The right lighting. Even Sofia Coppola knew that — she wrapped tragedy in soft pink and vintage filters to make it palatable.”

Jeeny: “You think beauty’s just packaging?”

Jack: “Yeah. It sells sorrow better.”

Host: Jeeny stopped skating. Her breath came out in small, silver clouds. She looked at him from the center of the rink, her figure small beneath the hollow lights.

Jeeny: “You think that’s all it is — selling sorrow? Then why do we still feel something when we see it?”

Jack: “Because we’re conditioned to. We’ve been trained to romanticize suffering. It’s what art does. Turn someone’s breakdown into a mood board.”

Jeeny: “Maybe. But isn’t that still a form of salvation? Turning pain into something we can bear looking at?”

Host: The question hung in the cold air, turning to frost before it could fall.

Jack: “You really believe that?”

Jeeny: “I have to. Otherwise, what’s the point? That scene — Elle skating — it’s the only moment of freedom in the whole film. The girls are suffocating in silence, in suburban purity, and yet for those few seconds, she flies. That’s not artifice, Jack. That’s escape.”

Jack: “Temporary escape. Like a dream you wake up from.”

Jeeny: “Dreams matter. Even if they don’t last.”

Host: Jeeny pushed off the ice and glided toward him — slow, graceful, deliberate. Each movement was both defiance and grief.

Jack: “You sound like you want to live in a movie.”

Jeeny: “Sometimes I do. Movies remember what life forgets — that moments, not outcomes, are what make us human.”

Jack: “And yet movies lie. They cut out the noise, the ugliness. They make pain beautiful.”

Jeeny: “But maybe beauty doesn’t lie, Jack. Maybe beauty just translates. It doesn’t deny the pain — it gives it form.”

Host: The ice cracked faintly beneath her skates. A subtle sound — fragile, like the moment between confession and silence.

Jack: “You really think the scene is about freedom?”

Jeeny: “It’s about what freedom feels like when you know it’s fleeting. That’s why Charli XCX loves it. Because it’s the same energy her music has — wild, feminine, doomed, and luminous.”

Jack: “Luminous doom. That’s your kind of poetry.”

Jeeny: “Maybe because I see it everywhere — in women who are told to be pretty, but not too wild; emotional, but not too much; visible, but not too free. That skating scene is rebellion disguised as grace.”

Host: Jack’s face softened, a faint shadow of thought crossing his eyes. He leaned closer to the glass, the reflection of the rink stretching across his expression.

Jack: “You think beauty is rebellion.”

Jeeny: “When it’s real, yes. When it’s not trying to please, but to exist.”

Jack: “So then what’s ugliness?”

Jeeny: “Fear.”

Host: The word echoed through the empty rink, sharp and cutting.

Jack: “Fear of what?”

Jeeny: “Of being seen as you are. That’s what the girls in The Virgin Suicides felt. That’s what Elle Fanning’s skating means. For one second, she doesn’t care who’s watching. She’s not performing. She’s being.”

Jack: “And the tragedy?”

Jeeny: “That no one taught her how to stay in that freedom.”

Host: Jack looked down, the edge of his reflection fractured by the scratched glass.

Jack: “Maybe that’s the human condition — flashes of light, then back to darkness.”

Jeeny: “Or maybe it’s proof that light exists at all.”

Host: She reached the edge of the rink and pressed her hand against the glass between them. Jack hesitated, then mirrored her gesture. The barrier between them fogged with their breath.

Jeeny: “You think movies lie, but I think they remember. They remember what we once felt before the world made us afraid to feel it again.”

Jack: “And what happens when remembering hurts more than forgetting?”

Jeeny: “Then you skate anyway.”

Host: She smiled faintly, and for a moment, she seemed like that girl on the screen — young, unbroken, skating through the ache of her own story.

Jack: “You’re saying we should live like we’re being filmed?”

Jeeny: “No. I’m saying we should live like it matters. Like every turn, every fall, every moment of stillness has weight. Because it does.”

Host: The lights began to dim for closing time. The rink’s surface gleamed like liquid glass, streaked with marks of motion and memory.

Jack: “You know, when I first saw that scene, I thought it was about loneliness.”

Jeeny: “It is. But it’s also about beauty in loneliness. That’s what art gives us — the chance to hold the unbearable and call it beautiful.”

Jack: “Even if it’s only a trick of the light?”

Jeeny: “Especially then.”

Host: They both laughed softly — the kind of laugh that ends in silence, not joy.

Jack: “So what you’re saying is… maybe life’s like that scene — we’re all skating on thin ice, pretending not to notice the cracks.”

Jeeny: “And pretending is a kind of courage too.”

Host: Jack stepped onto the ice for the first time. His movements were uncertain, awkward. Jeeny took his hand, steadying him, guiding him into motion. Together they moved — two figures gliding beneath the final hum of lights, the air trembling with ghostly music and unspoken understanding.

Jack: “You think we could ever live like that — not performing, not pretending?”

Jeeny: “Maybe not forever. But sometimes, for a few seconds, yes. That’s all the scene was ever trying to say.”

Host: The camera would pull back now — the two of them framed against the endless white, their shadows merging as they circled the rink. The music swelled, the light turned gold, and for a fleeting instant, the world looked perfect — even if only because it was about to fade.

And in that fading, the truth:
Beauty and tragedy are not opposites.
They are each other’s reflection on the ice.