The Last Days of Disco Review
by Seth Bookey (sethbook AT panix DOT com)August 24th, 1998
REVIEW OF: Last Days of Disco, The (1998)
Director Whit Stillman is comfortable in the niche he created for himself with the acclaimed, chatty film Metropolitan and Barcelona, and continues in this vein, further following the lives of young, bored intellectuals. This time, he sets it in the very early 1980s, which was basically the last hurrah of the 1970s, disco, and the sexual revolution as it was known.
The core group here all know each other from an exclusive school and are very smart, but still fall prey to the seduction of the nightlife, and youthful naivete. Charlotte (Kate Beckinsale) and Alice (Chloe Sevigny) work in a book publishing company. Charlotte is full of what seems like prescient advice, given in a spirit of knowledge and malice at every turn possible, which undermines Alice in several ways, and work against herself as well--though she would never quite realize it. Together they go to an exclusive disco, where a strict door policy allows them to be among the descriminate few readily allowed in its doors.
Jimmy (MacKenzie Astin), a junior ad exec, is a friend that keeps getting allowed into the club by his friend Des (Christopher Eigeman); Josh (Matthew Keeslar) is the Assistant District Attorney who also knows all of them from school, where he had a nervous breakdown. He's still a little odd at this point, also.
Being a young group of twentysomethings, they try to all hang out together, extend the good times of college, and still talk like they are in a Western Lit seminar. Meanwhile, what really happens, is real life. Sexually transmitted diseases that seemed like a fate worse than death (herpes, before AIDS, meant being doomed) were abounding. Drugs and large sacks of cash are all over the club, which Josh is investigating while trying to get his friends spared. This is probably the only part of the movie that genuinely does not fit in as well as it could.
Whit Stillman excels at showing us these very smart characters chatting away yet still suffering human frailties. They talk about life but they miss all the points sometimes. Charlotte rails against everyone "ferociously pairing off" and extols the virtues of "the group" and promptly steals her Alice's beau (and Alice is her co-worker, roommate, and "friend"). Even while trying to evade the justice system, Shakesperean virtues are argued in the gettaway cab. Perhaps a bit long but enormously entertaining. Forensic-Club-style arguments about the psychologies of the dogs in Lady and The Tramp are completely normal here, and very
entertaining.
What makes The Last Days of Disco a bit more accessible is the period treatment. The Satyricon nature of the disco nightlife is glitteringly portrayed. Charlotte and Alice look over the dancefloor from a balcony, ripe with the expectation of sexual freedom and unlimited choices. Meanwhile, everyone there is pretty much trick or treating. Some characters actually get into the disco disguised as Wizard of Oz characters, but this is not Kansas. Even Ildiko Jaid Barrymore is on hand parodying her former persona--"Tiger Lady."
All the performances are fine, but it's the dialogue that runs the show. If you want to put this in the context of Stillman's other films, rent Metropolitan first, see this film, and then Barcelona to follow these young intellectuals from high school through young adulthood to professional life. References to Barcelona are made, and some characters from that movie make cameos as well.
Jennifer Beals makes an appearance as one of Des's jilted lovers, as he fobs her off by declaring he thinks he's gay--a fact ascertained by a sexual yen for Marlon Perkin's assistant Jim on Wild Kingdom.
----------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright (c) 1998, Seth J. Bookey, New York, NY 10021 [email protected]; http://www.panix.com/~sethbook
More movie reviews by Seth Bookey, with graphics, can be found at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2679/kino.html
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