The Last Days of Disco

As I mentioned in my opening post about Kate Beckinsale, the best film to feature her in a starring role was Whit Stillman's 1998 film The Last Days of Disco, a wry look at a particular slice of time in a particular strata of American society. Stillman, who could be thought of as the WASP Woody Allen, made a trilogy of films about the children of privilege sometimes awkwardly taking steps into adulthood, and this was the third film. It also remains, disappointingly, his most recent film.

The film, set in 1980, centers around two women, Beckinsale and Chloe Sevigny, who knew each other at Hampshire College and currently work as editorial assistants at a publishing house. Beckinsale is the more assured and popular one, and takes Sevigny to the hottest disco in town (it is never named, but we can presume it's Studio 54). Beckinsale gives her shier, more serious friend pointers on being a hit with men (she tells Sevigny that she has the look of a kindergarten teacher about her), including things like throwing the word "sexy" into conversation. Sevigny takes her advice and ends up with a one-night stand with a Harvard man, Robert Sean Leonard, who collects Uncle Scrooge comics.

Meanwhile Chris Eigeman (a Stillman regular) is another Harvard grad, and a manager at the disco. He gets in trouble for letting in his friend (Mackenzie Astin), an advertising man, bring clients into the club. Another Harvard friend (Matt Keeslar) has just landed a job as a Manhattan D.A., much to Eigeman's surprise, given that Keeslar once had a mental breakdown.

These characters, along with a few others, pair up in various combinations. Beckinsale and Sevigny rent an apartment together, even though they're not sure they like each other. Beckinsale, in fact, has a real mean streak, and when Sevigny passes on an alcoholic beverage, she speculates in front of everyone that Sevigny must be taking antibiotics for a venereal disease. It turns out she's right, and by way of apology tells her friend that getting V.D. can actually improve her social life.

This film is a marvelously rich tapestry, and that it's about characters whom I normally would like to machine-gun to death is a testament to Stillman's writing skill. These people are shallow and pretentious, but Stillman makes them so vulnerable that my heart goes out to them. Sevigny, in particular, is like an orphan in the storm, unsure of every move she makes. She's too serious by half (she announces, twice, that the writer of Spider-Man comics is not a genius). Eigeman is immensely appealing, though he is a womanizer who breaks up with women by telling them he's just figured out he's gay (he discovered this when he realized he was attracted to the zoologist on Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom).

The script is full of nuggets, such as a group analysis of Lady and the Tramp, when the participants start identifying with the characters of that film--either the tail-chasing Tramp or the loyal Scottie. Keeslar says the film has indoctrinated women into being attracted to jerks. Or another debate on whether they are yuppies--they're young, but they're not necessarily upwardly mobile, or professional. In some ways the film reminded me of an upper-middle class Diner, but that film was about men, while Disco has a balance of genders and the romantic tensions resulting from it.

Through it all is the disco, which is where the story is anchored. Stillman seems to have affection for both the music and the lifestyle. Beckinsale reminds Sevigny that the Woodstock generation, who "were so full of themselves and conceited" couldn't dance. Keeslar's character sees disco as a movement, and the disco as a contemporary salon. But the tides are shifting, as the title indicates. At the end of the film the doorman of the club, an imperious decider standing guard at the velvet rope, tells the group that disco is dead, and church bells chime. Keeslar can't believe it: "Disco was too great and too much fun to be gone forever."

Stillman's trilogy, Metropolitan, Barcelona, and The Last Days of Disco, are excellent films. I hope he makes another film some day.