The Last Days of Disco (Stillman, 1998): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 8.40pm
Time Out review:
Manhattan, the early '80s. Recent graduates from an upper crust college,
Alice (Chloe Sevigny) and Charlotte (Kate Beckinsale) - flatmates and friends of a
sort - pass their days working as trainee publishing editors, and most
of their nights discussing social niceties at a fashionable disco where
assistant manager Des (Eigeman) courts the boss's disfavour by admitting
the wrong kind of clientele. The girls hang out at the disco with a
preppy bunch of Harvard admen and lawyers; rumour, rivalry and
falling-out is rife and relationships are frequently at risk. The third
comedy of manners in Whit Stillman's loose trilogy about the 'doomed
bourgeois in love' again highlights the writer/director's expertise with
naturalistically articulate dialogue whose idioms, ironies and
absurdities provide vivid insights into the delusions, desires and often
ludicrous tribal rituals of the young, privileged and, mostly, pretty
ineffectual. Like Metropolitan and Barcelona, it's a
brittle, sporadically brilliant film, very funny but rooted in social,
political, historical and emotional realities. Beckinsale, especially,
is a revelation, making Charlotte smug, spiteful, sexy and, underneath,
rather sad, all with a spot-on accent.
Geoff Andrew
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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