THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO A film review by David N. Butterworth Copyright 1998 David N. Butterworth
*** (out of ****)
Now that "Boogie Nights" has made disco respectable again (well, fashionable at least), we shouldn't be surprised to see more films glorifying that dubious era.
The latest art house interpretation is Whit Stillman's "The Last Days of Disco." Stillman, who made "Metropolitan" and "Barcelona" using some of the same actors, uses disco's final hours to highlight what is another conversation-heavy movie that benefits from typically astute writing from the director.
The young, upwardly-mobile professional (don't call them yuppies!) men and women of "The Last Days of Disco" frequent a prestigious New York City nightclub pulsating to the bass-pounding rhythms of Earth Wind and Fire, Amy Grant, and Andrea True Connection. Here they talk and talk and talk, intellectualizing about such things as dating, success, and being liked, accepted, and admired. If talk is cheap, "The Last Days of Disco" must surely have been an extremely inexpensive movie to shoot.
What makes the film so entertaining is that this preppie, Harvard-educated jet set actually have something to say and say it with wit, perception, and style (including, at one point, a riotously inventive deconstruction of "The Lady and the Tramp").
Naïve Alice (Chloë Sevigny) and sophisticated Charlotte (Kate Beckinsale) are recent college graduates who work as assistant editors for a New York publishing house. Charlotte is confident and outspoken--perhaps a little too outspoken; Alice is shy and introverted, "like a kindergarten teacher." The two friends often doll themselves up and head out to the nameless nightspot, looking good and looking for excitement (and that Ms. Beckinsale sure looks good on a dancefloor!).
Here they meet, or re-meet, a variety of eligible men, many of whom they knew in college. Des (played by Stillman favorite Christopher Eigeman) is one of the club's managers whose job is on the line for sneaking his ad agency buddies in the back. Des has reached a crisis point in his life: he just found out--last Wednesday, in fact--that he's gay. Whether it's true or not, it makes for a convenient excuse to dump his latest girlfriend (Jennifer Beals in a small but soul-baring turn). Charlotte observes cattily that the only gay thing about Des is his mouth.
Jimmy (MacKenzie Astin) is the advertising exec who, by the end of the picture, winds up heading for a new job opportunity in Spain (visions of "Barcelona"?). Josh (Matt Keeslar) is an assistant district attorney who dreams of being able to say, just once, "book this clown!" And Robert Sean Leonard plays another one of Alice's revolving suitors; the two have an amusing exchange about the true definition of virginity. Any film that can make Robert Sean Leonard palatable is worthy of respect in my book. In fact, the entire ensemble is appealing in that well-spoken Stillman way.
While the eschewing of "ferocious pairing" is a favored topic of conversation in the film, the protagonists tend to slip in and out of love, lust, and trouble with each other in an emotional merry-go-round that cleverly develops its characters through the "preferred" dynamics of social group interaction.
More mature than Stillman's previous two films, "The Last Days of Disco" is as consistently droll as it is stimulating. It's a movie you should definitely get on down to.
-- David N. Butterworth dnb@mail.med.upenn.edu
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