Released in April 2000, Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides offered audiences a dramatically different sort of coming-of-age story than they had seen before: a melancholy portrait of teenage girlhood, filtered through the perspectives of enchanted—and intrigued—boy counterparts.

An adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides’ novel of the same name, Coppola’s debut feature treated adolescence like the magic, mysterious and yet sad landscape that it very much feels like when you’re going through it (or at least it seems to in our collective memories). She supplemented her tender treatment of the material with a film score composed by French electronic artists Air, whose members Jean-Benoit Dunckel and Nicolas Godin created a collection of cues that still rank among their best work—a soundtrack, quite literally, to the feeling of growing up.

The film, and its music, went on to become cult favorites for multiple generations. Yet in an equally bittersweet twist, Dunckel and Godin were never quite satisfied with their contributions. To commemorate the soundtrack’s 25th anniversary, the duo went back and remixed all the tracks for, effectively, a brand-new edition. Set for release both on vinyl and digital platforms on Friday, September 26, 2025, The Virgin Suicides Redux features an all-new mix transferred from analog tape, along with a bonus disc of demos, alternate cues and other ephemera from their recording sessions.

Almost a year into their tour to celebrate their debut album Moon Safari, which turned 25 in 2023, and just days ahead of their extraordinary performance with a full orchestra at Los Angeles’ Hollywood Bowl, Godin and Dunckel spoke with Screen Rant about the process of resurrecting and truly reimagining The Virgin Suicides soundtrack. They also hinted at the possibility of future reissues (or at least what it might take to pull one together), and talked about the inspiration they’re feeling to reunite not to celebrate past glories, but to create new ones.

ScreenRant’s Exclusive Interview With Iconic French Band Air

You originally recorded the score to The Virgin Suicides in a sort of primitive era of digital recording. What was the process of expanding its sound for a remastered edition?

Nicolas Godin: When we did it, we were producing ourselves. Moon Safari was released a few months [before], and we didn’t get the money yet, so we bought some digital recording mixer and recorder. And since that day, I was very frustrated by the metallic sound [of the recordings]. I regretted it, especially after one year later we had all the money we wanted because Moon Safari was a big success. Of course, everybody thinks it’s a marketing thing to re-release stuff, but then I thought, what about this thing that hurts my stomach each time I think about it? Let’s do it the right way. So we transferred everything to tape and we mixed on a big old Neve [console] from the seventies and we brought the tape to the mastering. So everything is analog now. I don’t hear this metallic thing that was bothering me, and the sound is much more warm. And so now I can turn the page and move on—now the record sounds like it was supposed to sound.

On the track listing for this new release, the “Suicide Underground” bonus track references French film composer Francis Lai. Were there specific cinematic points of inspiration when you originally composed the score?

Jean-Benoit Dunckel: For The Virgin Suicides, there was a vision because of the pictures and the atmosphere. And that was more about the instruments that we had at the time, because we were in LA, and we bought a lot of equipment that we liked, this keyboard, and also we bought an organ, and so we wanted to play with them. So we were influenced by the sound of the instruments themselves and not that much by other artists. And also, we wanted to go away from Moon Safari—we wanted to do something much more dark and much more strange.

I don’t know how much Sofia might have temped any of the movie, but was it just the choice of those instruments that gave you a sense of tone?

Godin: The tone was guided by the book. We used to say that we did the soundtrack for the book but not for the film, because when they edited the film, it was a much lighter vibe even with the drama of the suicides. The book is much more dramatic. And also with Moon Safari, we were in all of the shopping malls and shops and H๏τels and cocktail bars. So we wanted to do music that was much more freaky and more scary, that you don’t want to play in the lounge bar.

Dunckel: The Virgin Suicides was in line with the books of Bret Easton Ellis, like Less Than Zero, about disappointment about being young in America. And that’s why the book is very dark, it’s very depressive. And we tried to incorporate this kind of darkness into the sound.

You have gone on to compose a lot of other film scores. Were there early lessons from the process of this that gave you a shorthand when you came to those other projects?

Godin: Making a score sometimes makes you make music faster, like it’s easier than to have a blank page when you make an album. You’re not that much in a rush, and it makes you do things very naturally—you don’t torture yourself as much as for an album. So sometimes it leads to great results. But when you make an album, when you compose a melody or a theme, then that’s it. But with a soundtrack, you can make six different songs, all with the same melody. So it can be a much more joyful process because you can do different trials with the same elements.

Dunckel: What I learned about doing The Virgin Suicides is that as a composer, it’s great to do your own thing and not to obey too much the movie director. Because on one hand, it’s going to drive you into a bad idea, because it’s not your idea. So it’s good to be a bit off and to do your own thing, even if it’s sometimes weird. And I think that when the soundtrack is a bit weird, it’s good because it drives people into another atmosphere. The Virgin Suicides is a bit off: It’s an album about the movie, not totally the real soundtrack, and I like that.

How is the set list on your current tour impacted by the anniversary of The Virgin Suicides reissue?

Dunckel: We are on our Moon Safari tour now, but after playing Moon Safari [in its entirety], we play sort of our best tracks. In LA we’re going to do a large version of the show, one hour and 45 minutes, so we’re going to play a lot of other tracks, but the first part is Safari. In the second part, recently we have added a track from The Virgin Suicides called “Dirty Trip.”

Nicolas pushed back on the notion that revisiting an older album might be a cash grab. The Virgin Suicides Redux was obviously a pure creative endeavor for you. But are there any other albums that you think might merit a deluxe edition in the years to come?

Godin: I think all of them, but each needs a different angle. For this one, we focused on the frustration that the record didn’t sound the way we wanted it to sound. For the next album, we’ll use different ideas, and it’ll not be the same thing. Each album has got its own potential for reissue.

Is there anywhere you had a similar experience, where it was not the fulfillment of your ambitions in the moment?

Dunckel: I don’t know. The Redux version of The Virgin Suicides is really important because we were frustrated at the time. But for our other albums, I think that we gave the maximum that we could. But now, people like to have an Atmos mix, so maybe we’ll do another kind of mix for Talkie Walkie or 10,000 Hz Legend. But I’m not a big fan of reissuing demo versions and alternative versions, because when you release an album, you worked on it at the maximum possibilities that you could. So why should we release something not as good as the version that we agreed to release?

How much has this experience rekindled enthusiasm from either of you in collaborating again on something new?

Godin: We do things one by one, and The Virgin Suicides was very important. It changed me a lot. So I want to finish it and sleep for two months—and then think of the future.

Dunckel: It’s beautiful to see how people react to the band. It’s like the audience made the band because they liked it, and they pushed us to be on stage and even to record these albums because of their faith in us. And maybe this incredible audience, which is regenerating every 10 years because now we have some incredible young fans, will show us a way to get back in the studio and to do music—[both] that they expect and also that we can imagine. Now, I feel much more driven by the energy of the people, just not about myself. And from the magnetic fields that people are sending us, I can feel what we could do, and this is the exciting thing. They show us the way. So we will see if we have the feeling of it, but I don’t know.