Kirsten Dunst crashed a Bring It On, The Virgin Suicides slumber party, confirming she was the queen of 1999

Kirsten Dunst surprised a Los Angeles audience this weekend when she turned up for a double-bill screening of two of her most iconic films, The Virgin Suicides and Bring It On.

The event was dubbed the “Kirsten Dunst Slumber Party” and took place at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. She came out on stage quoting from Bring It On, “I’m T-T-Torrance, your captain Torrance” and later posted a video to her Instagram of herself singing along to the first cheer in the film.

She said she was overwhelmed to be there and sat in with the crowd, admitting that she hadn’t seen either film with an audience since she was a teenager.

In theory, the event was to celebrate the 25th anniversary of both movies although Bring It On was actually a 2000 release. And if you want to be really technical about it, The Virgin Suicides is dated as a 1999 film because of its premiere at Cannes that year but it wasn’t released widely until 2000.

Much has been written about 1999 as a bumper year for zeitgeist-penetrating and critically acclaimed movies made by studios and independent outfits, ambitious young filmmakers and older masters, lapped by an audience who wanted to go to the movies and see something that surprised and moved them.

This was the year in which the following films came out: The Matrix, The Sixth Sense, Being John Malkovich, The Talented Mr Ripley, The Blair Witch Project, Notting Hill, Three Kings, Fight Club, Eyes Wide Shut, Magnolia, Election and 10 Things I Hate About You.

In terms of originality, boldness and endurance in the wider cultural consciousness, no other year since has managed that alchemical mix. Not long after the turn of the millennium, sequels, remakes and franchises took over the culture.

In 1999, of the top 20 movies at the global box office, only three were part of a franchise. Two decades on in 2019, every English-language movie was based on existing intellectual property. Last year, it was 16.

In the middle of this 1999 movie renaissance, there was Dunst. She starred in three memorable films that year – The Virgin Suicides, Drop Dead Gorgeous and Dick - and then chased it up with Bring It On.

When you name Dunst’s most iconic roles, this era is most definitely in the mix. And she was still a teenager.

Which is not to say that she peaked then. In the years since, Dunst has turned in incredible, raw and tensile performances in Melancholia (for which she won the Best Actress accolade at Cannes), The Power of the Dog (nominated for an Oscar), Civil War and on TV in Fargo and On Becoming a God in Central Florida.

But there was something about that moment in time in which a 17-year-old girl came to embody a golden year of filmmaking. She was a mix of innocence and vulnerability, sass and confidence and the irrepressible freshness of youth.

Dunst was the queen of 1999.

THE VIRGIN SUICIDES

Sofia Coppola said meeting a then 16-year-old Dunst brought the Lisbon sisters to life in her mind, and as Lux, the most rebellious of the cloistered and ultimately tragic sisters in this tale of 1970s suburban malaise, Dunst was ethereal and yet tangible at the same time.

The Virgin Suicides was Coppola’s first feature and she and Dunst would go on to work together another three times, most notably in Marie Antoinette. She was a perfect fit for Coppola’s dreamscape aesthetic and female gaze.

DROP DEAD GORGEOUS

If you know, you know. A campy cult classic more than a classic classic, Drop Dead Gorgeous starred Dunst as a plucky wannabe newsreader who, in order to follow in the footsteps of her hero Diane Sawyer, enters her town’s beauty pageant.

She lives in a caravan, her mum is an alcoholic and her after-school job is doing make-up on the cadavers at a funeral home. But it’s going to be a wild contest, especially when her fiercest competition is the uber-Christian, soulless rich girl (Denise Richards) whose mother (Kirstie Alley) has rigged the contest.

An unhinged satire and an underrated gem.

DICK

Directed by Andrew Fleming, a purveyor of very extra teen stories such as Threesome and The Craft, Dick re-imagines the Watergate scandal, but what if it had been foiled by two high schoolers?

The pair (the other being Michelle Williams) unwittingly become crucial to one of the most momentous times in American history, disrupting Richard Nixon’s nefarious schemes while hired as his dogwalkers and ending up as Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward’s secret informers.

It’s silly and fun but it puts two teen girls, who everyone underestimated, at the centre of a story that changed the course of the US’s future.

BRING IT ON

As one of the last in the wave of late-90s teen movies, Bring It On continues to be memed, rewatched and beloved.

On the surface, it’s a lightweight story about high school cheerleaders trying to win a national championship but scratch even a little bit and you find a story about class, race and competition.

Dunst created an icon in Torrance Shipman, a carefree California teen who was dealt a massive blow but had the tenacity to try again and the grace to cede she doesn’t always have to win.