To: epicure who wrote (892 ) 7/17/1999 11:25:00 AM From: Neocon Respond to
I finally saw The Last Days of Disco on the Sundance Channel. I had missed it earlier, but meant to see it. It was not as good as I might have liked, but it had a certain charm...Whit Stillman, the auteur behind it, first burst upon the scene with Metropolitan, which followed a group of upper middle class Manhattanites during debutante season, and was suffused with nostalgia for a waning way of life. In Barcelona, two cousins try to find love and some sense of purpose in their careers while experiencing anti- Americanism, fast women, and a life threatening attack.(Mira Sorvino plays one of the fast women, by the way). In the Last Days of Disco, a bunch of privileged products of good college's pursue their entry level jobs, seek romance or sex, and find community at a fictionalized Studio 54. The focus of interest seems to be conflict between the expectations of hardwork, discipline, good taste, and intelligence bred into these people, and their pamperedness, vanity, and desire to appear sophisticated. The most idealistic guy in the group turns out to love discos the best, because they create a meeting place, a sense of community, and give everyone an opportunity to dance, and yet he is the one who, in his role as an assistant district attorney, closes the place down due to its corruption....The dialogue is a bit more out of place in this context than is common to Stillman's films, and the choice of Chloe Sevigny (who also appeared in Kids) as the female lead was probably a mistake, because she is not in tune with her character enough. The quasi- 54, from what I have seen in documentaries, is much too tame, and Stillman seems a little less certain than usual of why is he showing us this stuff. But it is interesting, and those of you who might find the theme, as I articulated it, appealing, might want to check it out, although the earlier films were better.
