The Last Days of Disco
The Last Days of Disco is the middle part of Whit Stillmans yuppie trilogy, bookended by Metropolitan and Barcelona. Though it is chronologically the earliest of the three, Disco shows what happens to the characters in Metropolitan once they get out of college, and it anticipates the Spanish setting of Barcelona. None of the three movies have characters in common, of course, but thats just a technicality.
Whit Stillmans films are all of a piece. The characters are generically the same brainy, well-off Eastern kids living in the big city, inhabiting a scene, making witty dialog. Its like Friends with a brain. Dialog is key, and always wonderfully written. These people talk a lot, they are smart, often too smart, and they tend to be rather mean to each other. As such Stillman is an acquired taste. I like him, but I wouldnt force him on anyone else.
The time is the very early 80s. Disco covers six months in the lives of a handful of post-college kids living and working in New York. Two work in publishing, one in advertising, another is an assistant District Attorney, and the last is a manager at a club based loosely on the old Studio 54. They all have a history dating back years or at least months, and they all hang around the club, which is run by a tax-evading scumbag. They work during the day, go clubbing at night, share apartments, have sex and talk and talk and talk.
Now I always like two things about a Stillman film. I like the crisp, pseudo-intellectual dialog (a deconstruction of Lady and the Tramp is hilarious) and I like the characters themselves, their relations with each other, the way they insult each other and fall in and out of love with each other and bother each other until whatever it was holding them together falls apart and they all go their separate ways with a feeling of regret. I shouldnt like them, because they are all rich (or at least come from affluent families) and somewhat snobbish and they all have certain expectations out of life and are at least a little resentful of outsiders. Stillman was one of them, by the way, and thats probably why hes able to portray rich kids so sympathetically. He doesnt take them altogether seriously, of course, but neither does he treat them like cardboard cutouts in a class warfare morality play. Stillman allows his characters all the dignity that they deserve, which is not to say that he finds them particularly admirable. Theyre just people.
The ending is no surprise, of course; everyone knows disco died, and these people felt it. Felt it hard, actually. They like disco and the ending explains a little why some people might actually find such a thing valuable. It was a stage in their lives and when it ended they all moved on, to another scene or another stage, with, as I said, regret, and even a little wisdom. Life has a way of happening like that. Highly recommended, if you liked Metropolitan.
Kevin W. Welch, kwelch@mailbag.com
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