For those pining for the return Whit Stillman, the 1990s indie sensation whose trilogy of films, Metropolitan, Barcelona and Last Days of Disco carved
out a lasting auteur niche in a decade full of American
indie-breakouts, his first film in 13 years technically meets that basic
criteria - he has made a film - but it is not exactly what the faithful
might expect. The director has always leaned towards dense dialogue
over visual flourishes making him sort of a socialite, yuppie-focused
Kevin Smith (I probably just lost the 'criterion collector crowd' with
that comparison and in all fairness, Stillman was there first.) Yet his
characters always displayed some level of humanity between the witty
dialogue and a signature high-minded, entitled brand of narcissism
acting as mask to hide confusion with the world. In short, his films
had something to say beyond their own entertaining peak at the 'useless
elite.' A friend of mine maintains that the directors work is always
unappreciated until it ages a little, but I think this may be an
exception (time will, of course, tell...) Damsels In Distress
finds Stillman making a bitter mockery of his previous work cloaked
in effervescent frivolity. It is as if Stillman came out of retirement
as an act self-immolation. The familiar syntax is present, the
characters are in a similar social stratum, here a fictional university
that caters to parents who buy their dunce-lings into an education bound
not to stick, but the whole affair comes across as a vapid version of Clueless (i.e.
life is a 'shopping experience' distillation of Emma). Either that, or
the writer/director has no finger on the pulse of this generation and
no interest in understanding them either.
Greta
Gerwig, giving a great performance that one wishes was in a better film,
plays Violet, who leads a small posse of sophomore do-gooders, Heather
and Rose, and new exchange student recruit Lily, according to her
pseudo-intellectual whims. For starters they run the Suicide Prevention
Center ("Come on! It's not that bad!") on campus, sponsored by Dunkin'
Donuts in which the free coffee and snacks are for the depressed only, a
detail emphasized as much zeal as the meticulous dance routines they
suffer their charges through. Even strangers, Violet insists, as the
font of wisdom, that they only date boys way beneath them intellectually
and socially, which (due to the bad body odour of the stoner crowd)
leaves only the Frat houses, whose members make the future postulated by
Mike Judge in Idiocracy look so bright we've gotta wear shades!
Violet's chief ambition is to start a worldwide dance craze, but along
the way, she finds herself caught up in a number of 'crazy boy
adventures' with her fellow air-headed damsels, who act as more window
dressing than actual characters. Lily, the stand-in for the audience,
starts making excuses to part ways; perhaps this is a knowing nod to the
film itself. Gerwig is exemplary in her performance, she almost makes
you care about her existential crisis in the middle of the film, until
you realize it is all so much facile twaddle.
I'd
be lying if I said that I did not laugh out loud on a number of
occasions during the film, but it was more of the 'shock' variety of
just how vacuous Stillman's philosophical musings are on this generation
of ladies and guys. Apparently he is content to dance his way to a
blissfully ignorant apocalypse, maybe break (or re-establish) an
outdated social norm or two. Is the man bitter, or is his grasp on the
filmmaking of modern indie quirk so far off base as to make Zach Braff
wince? And I say this because a film such as Metropolitan might
have been a touchstone for the Wes Anderson's of the world.
Nevertheless, the shoehorning in (so to speak) of a no-so-innocent
discussion on anal sex is as jarringly out of place as a poster of Jean
Renoir's The Grand Illusion or the strange iMovie glow-filter in
which many of the campus exteriors are shot. Albeit it is a campus of
toga parties and not a single cellular phone and laptop. The landscape
here is alien, completely unlike Stillman's previous pictures which were
well grounded in reality. This would be all fine and nice, if it were
playground for something other than dysfunctional Stepford Wives in
training. Oh well, the Sony Pictures Classics logo looks good in Pink,
and the promised footnotes that precede the closing chapter were
mercifully absent. My expectations might have been dashed as an admirer
of the directors 1990s work, but ultimately, the movie is more suited
for casual dismissal than bona fide ire.
While I think there is definitely a cult out there that will form around Damsels in Distress. Any
film this whimsically odd tends to find a niche, enthusiastic audience,
eventually. It is probably safe to say that this audience is unlikely
to be made up of folks who cherish Stillman's previous work. As
delayed, superfluous-in-hindsight sequels go, it's his Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Source: http://twitchfilm.com
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