The Last Days of Disco Review
by Scott Renshaw (renshaw AT inconnect DOT com)June 4th, 1998
THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO
(Gramercy)
Starring: Chloe Sevigny, Kate Beckinsale, Chris Eigeman, Mackenzie Astin, Matt Keeslar, Robert Sean Leonard, Matthew Ross, Tara Subkoff. Screenplay: Whit Stillman.
Producer: Whit Stillman.
Director: Whit Stillman.
MPAA Rating: R (profanity, brief nudity, drug use, adult themes) Running Time: 109 minutes.
Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
A funny thing happens when the characters start dancing in Whit Stillman's THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO: they stop talking. Set in the early 1980s, the story follows several young people whose social lives revolve around a super-trendy Manhattan disco referred to only as "the club." Among them are Alice (Chloe Sevigny) and Charlotte (Kate Beckinsale), roommates and co-workers as manuscript readers for a publishing house; Jimmy (Mackenzie Astin), a junior advertising executive whose job depends on getting potential clients into the club; Tom (Robert Sean Leonard), a Harvard man Alice admires from afar; Josh (Matt Keeslar), an assistant district attorney with a history of manic-depression; and Des (Chris Eigeman), the club's womanizing assistant manager who ends his flings by claiming to have discovered that he's gay.
Most of the time, these characters do what characters in films by Whit Stillman (METROPOLITAN, BARCELONA) typically do: they engage in a whole lot of urbane conversation. They share views on the value of group social activities versus "ferocious pairing-off." They wax philosophical on contemporary male-female relationship dynamics. They complain about being perceived as "yuppies" despite feeling that their career prospects are limited. They exchange observations on pop culture phenomena (including how BAMBI sparked the environmental movement and LADY AND THE TRAMP indoctrinated young girls into desiring "bad boys") like Tarantino characters toting highball glasses. They talk and talk and talk and talk until amusement at their bon mots gives way to frustration as you begin wishing you could grab every one of them by the collar and beg someone, anyone to do something, anything.
What they eventually do -- all they eventually do, really, besides talk -- is dance. For several seconds at a time, Stillman will hold the camera on a couple doing their clumsy middle-class boogieing to Chic or Diana Ross or Evelyn "Champagne" King with nary a sound to be heard but the tunes. These moments anchor a two-pronged approach by Stillman to the disco culture. On the one hand, he clearly appreciates selected songs from the much-derided genre, and enjoys providing a showcase for some of the livelier, funkier numbers (including a surreal closing scene with subway riders jumping up to the O'Jays' "Love Train"). On the other hand, he doesn't seem to care much for the disco environment, a haven for drugs, corruption, sexually-transmitted diseases and ultimately disappointing pairings of convenience, all tarted up to be irresistably hip. For an inveterate gab-meister like Stillman, the disco is practically his concept of hell -- a vacuous place where people fall into bed together after having shared only token words.
The social angle is occasionally intriguing, but you have to wade through an awful lot of tediousness and sloppy plotting to get to it. It's hard to keep track of the various romantic permutations in THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO, not because Stillman tears through the narrative at a breakneck pace but because his characters are so interchangeably earnest and clever. The notable exceptions are Eigeman (a veteran of Stillman's previous features) and Beckinsale, who at least add a bit of self-absorbed spice to the proceedings. Otherwise it's not easy to care about who ends up with whom, or why Stillman muddles through plot devices like an undercover investigation of the club's finances while abandoning the repercussions of one of Alice's one-night stands. The scattered comic high points are too subdued to overcome the incongruity between the subject matter and Stillman's approach to it. For a film about the flame-out of a flashy era, THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO is just too languid and verbose. Only for those few moments when the music starts and the talking stops does the film feel like it's got to be real.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 discothequeniques: 5.
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