THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO (1998) A Film Review by Ted Prigge Copyright 1998 Ted Prigge
Writer/Director: Whit Stillman Starring: Chloë Sevigny, Kate Beckinsale, Christopher Eigeman, Matthew Keeslar, MacKenzie Astin, Matthew Ross, Tara Subkoff, Robert Sean Leonard, Burr Steers, David Thornton, Jaid Barrymore, Michael Weatherly, Jennifer Beals, Mark McKinney, Carolyn Farina, Dylan Hundley, Taylor Nichols
>From looking at the title, Whit Stillman's "The Last Days of Disco" could be seen as a corny confession of his love for the music, arriving just at the time when everything 70s is suddenly (not to mention finally) suffering a comeback. After "Boogie Nights," the rebirth of John Travolta, the sudden unearthing of the Studio 54 phenomenon, and even another Bee Gees album, "The Last Days of Disco" comes out at a time when people would just go to see it to laugh at disco music, not to mention the people who actually enjoyed listening and dancing to it. Of course, Whit Stillman's much better than all that.
"The Last Days of Disco" is not really about the Disco Club phase as it is about a time in history when the whole reason some people went to these clubs was to bask in the social part of it all. The people that are the portrait of this film, the upper-middle-class soon-to-be-yuppies, may actually enjoy the music, but they go to the club out of a fear of not fitting in, and go there more to meet people, hold conversations, and maybe occasionally go home with one of them. The only reason they go to these kinds of clubs is because they're the fad at the time of the film.
Of course, anyone who's seen one of Stillman's films knows this. "Metropolitan" and "Barcelona" are (in)famous for being plotless talkfests, featuring characters that have rarely been filmed before. In "Metropolitan," he dubbed his group UHBs: Urban Haute Boreousie...or in other words, snobs. They're all well-educated, all read Salinger (as we all should), only flock in their particular group, but still have many of the same problems we all have. But while "Metropolitan" saw them as growing out of their young age, and "Barcelona" saw them as already working, "The Last Days of Disco" catches them at that inconvenient time known as post-graduation (and to make a connection between these films, Stillman brings back some old cast members for cameos, most notably Taylor Nichol's dorky Ted from "Barcelona," who makes a speech about, well, going to Barcelona).
There's nary a plot in this film (unless you count a little subplot that arises about narcotics and smuggled cash in the club), so we are instead introduced to a wide variety of characters who inhabit the club every now and then, most prominently Alice and Charlotte (Chloë Sevigny and Kate Beckinsale, respectively), two young women both working as book editing underlings in the same office, who become the film's chief focus as they hang out in their big clique and occasionally pair off with the male members who attract them at the moment. For Charlotte, she somewhat settles down with the hilariously insecure advertising underling, Jimmy (MacKenzie Astin, the guy from the latter seasons of "The Facts of Life"...don't ask me how I know that), who may not be the best partner for her, but at least it sorta seems that way.
Alice is a lot different from Charlotte, though, and the two are even more mismatched a pair of friends than the two leads from "Barcelona." Charlotte's a bit of a bitch, but one of those bitches who is somewhat hard to stay mad at because they act like they need to be friends with you. And besides, Charlotte's insecure about her future and maps out goals she must have for life, like getting married and working in television, while Alice is insecure in general and finds she's wandering a lot more than Charlotte. As the film goes on, she goes through a couple boyfriends, starting off with the suave but at the moment somewhat shallow Tom (Robert Sean Leonard), and even dating the wonderfully obnoxious club partner, Des (Christopher Eigeman, who's the main link between this and Stillman's other two films), all while the kinda off-kilter young DA Josh (Matthew Keeslar, from "Waiting for Guffman") looks on at her with longing.
The film wanders around with these people, never really sure where it wants to go because these people aren't either. One of the many great things about Stillman, why he's one of the best writer/directors working today is because he has an intriguing and ingenius knack for drawing character he's fascinated with, partly because they're probably part of him. As he's gotten older (he's in his late 30s, I think), he's been able to look back to his youth, when he was just like these people, and is able to paint portraits of them that are simultaneously loving and satirical. In other movies, these people would be looked on as mere snobs, but here, they're still snobs but they're also people.
While "Metropolitan," which dove deep into the lives of members of the Debutantes and Escorts circuit, had a bit of trouble making a clear connection between them and the audience (I know people whom I respect that just can't sit through it because they can't stand the characters), "The Last Days of Disco" shows that Stillman has finally found out how to make his characters totally lovable, and surprisingly more sympathetic. The characters are basically all of us at that point in our lives where we're just starting out in real life, struggling to make it in the big city without financial help from our parents, and struggling to make friends where the only social happenings are what you have to find for yourself.
And that's where the disco club comes in for these people, and why it's demise is seen as both tragic and as a relief. The club is basically all these people have to really make aquaintances, and where they can discuss novels, sex, and even the way that Disney films, like "Lady and the Tramp," are propaganda by Disney to make children into zombies (this speech is as funny if not more than anything Quentin Tarantino has ever written, and much more intelligent). The characters in this film are as insecure as everyone, and its this connection that rises "The Last Days of Disco" above either of the films Stillman has made before. We care about these characters because despite their social rank, are really us...or soon to be us.
"The Last Days of Disco" is the best film Stillman has made so far, not just because of this great connection he makes, but also because the film just allows us to live with these characters and watch their lives change and how they interact with one another. He has also never been able to control his actors this well before. Chloë Sevigny, the only cast member of "Kids" to do exceptionally well in that film, is simply awesome as Alice, and in an opposite field, Kate Beckinsale's performance as Charlotte is as flawless as her accent. Even MacKenzie Astin shows great promise as a slightly neurotic future yuppie, something I wouldn't have thought he'd be. And Christopher Eigeman has never been this delightfully obnoxious (his "To Thine Own Self Be True" speech is priceless).
As for Whit Stillman, a script of his has never been this sharp. He has such a great ear for the way the people in his film talk that he's up there with the likes of David Mamet, Quentin Tarantino, and Woody Allen as the best screenwriters currently working in films, and in this film, we see him at his most controlled as well as a talented writer for women's roles. His films seem to live just for the dialogue, and listening to his characters interact is as entertaining as anything on celluloid. But perhaps most commendable, he gives a voice to a group of people who haven't been represented since the glorious days of J.D. Salinger, mostly because he's been there, knows what it's like, and has distanced himself away from them so that he can write them fairly and with the right amount of humanity. "The Last Days of Disco" only furthers his credibility and establishes him as a very major talent in modern films. His past two films are amazing, but just shy of a four-star review, mostly because of a couple little problems that just didn't get it past the finish line. "The Last Days of Disco" does, though, because it's his most balanced, most likable, and overall most deep without becoming totally pretentious or unentertaining, and, well, manages to make a film pack a film with wall-to-wall disco tunes that still lives for the dialogue.
MY RATING (out of 4): ****
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