[Damsels in Distress opens in limited release in the U.S. tomorrow. The following review was first published during the Toronto International Film Festival last fall. But my thoughts have yet to change on this particular film, despite suggestions by some that a Stillman Joint has to occupy the collective cultural space for a few years before people start to fall in love with it...I disagree.]
For those pining for the return of 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 peek at the 'useless elite.' A friend of mine maintains that the director's 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 of 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.
On The Other Hand...
[Jason Gorber who also caught this last September, felt a tad differently, and I'm importing his thoughts (originally published on FilmFest.ca) as a counterpoint to the above. ]
Stillman's back after a dozen years in the wilderness, this time with a strange, film-out-of-time look at College, cliques and the goings on of young neurotics. Damsels in Distress sinks or swims if you buy into its world, and for me the film worked its charms from early on. Greta Gerwig is pitch perfect as Violet, the leader of a strange pack that seek to improve the lives of those women around them by both lowering expectations and setting the bar lower so that they feel empowered. As leader of the suicide prevention club, they mix tap dancing and donut give aways in an attempt to cheerfully whisk any negative thoughts away.
There's an almost Lynchian way in which these characters grit their teeth and smile, strolling the sun-drenched quad in throwback outfits that evoke the 50′s. Yet instead of a sense of dread or malice under the smiles, there's instead the everyday, common drive to get through this period of late adolescence with some sense of sunniness intact. Heck, even an anal sex cult becomes, under the umbrella of this film, ripe for both pathos and warm amusement. There's loads of times the film could easily have been derailed, but down to the final musical sequence, there's an infectious quality to the whole proceedings that's reminiscent of a Wes Anderson film. Violet's transition is both touching and very, very silly, and this mix of the superficial, banal elements with cleverly drawn, rich characters makes for an interesting blend.
Damsels in Distress works in much the same way as Heathers does, on one level a silly little film, on the other something both provocative and almost precocious. Stillman has returned with a lovely film, one that hopefully will find its audience among a slew of significantly lesser college-age narratives.