Defender of the American upper
crust and Comedy of Manners virtuoso, director and screenwriter Whit Stillman
has gained considerable acclaim for his witty depictions of youthful elites in
crisis. Thirteen years after the release of his last film, Stillman returns
with Damsels in Distress – a college
caper romance with panache – which conforms to the style of his earlier films
but with some trademark features noticeably more pronounced...
Damsels in Distress
Whit Stillman was 38 when he made his first film, Metropolitan, an expertly scripted chamber piece which went on to
be nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay in 1991. His second
feature, Barcelona, featured similar
characters that made Stillman’s first so distinctive – humorously drawn,
loquacious and privileged young adults – and this too was well received. However,
it was another four years before Stillman finished his third film, Last Days of Disco, about a college graduate called Alice, a virtuous heroine
played with well-considered ambiguity by Chloë Sevigny who moves in to an
apartment in New York with Charlotte, a ruthless socialite drawn out with
surprising depth by Kate Beckinsale.
While much has been made about the class of Stillman’s moneyed
protagonists, as well as their erudite conversation, little attention is
devoted to other recurring trademarks that define the film worlds he evokes. The
highly stylised aesthetics of a Stillman film, from the retro-design typefaces
used in his credit sequences to the classically tailored outfits worn by his
actors, all promote an idealised vision of the upper class. Another common
aspect is that almost all of the characters in Stillman’s films are young
adults struggling to come to terms with their identity, and as such display a
vulnerability that would be more difficult to convey in an older, possibly more
rigid set of personalities. In a recent interview, Stillman explained how
characters between the ages of 16 and 20 are of particular interest; “... that’s
a really interesting period in people’s lives because it’s sort of a petri dish
of identity formation.” By focussing on these precocious but nevertheless
uncertain individuals, Stillman presents a deliberately incomplete picture of
the wealthy by drawing singular attention to their offspring.
The youthful spirit of his films can also be seen in his playful use of
music and, in particular, dance – a form of expression Stillman holds up as a
mirror to the coded rituals that he explores in his meandering plots. In Damsels in Distress,
there is also little doubt that he uses the central role of Violet, portrayed
with pitch-perfect absurdity by Greta Gerwig, as a means of conveying
autobiographical elements from his past. Violet is the self-appointed queen bee
among a group of girls at the fictitious Seven Oaks College, determined to use
tap-dancing and improved hygiene as a means of increasing the social prospects
of her colleagues as well as preventing their demise through suicide. Gerwig’s
Violet is dominant, idealistic, sympathetic and determined to start her own
dance craze. She’s also a believer in the therapeutic qualities of a particular
brand of hotel soap which she finds while on a jaunt away from campus. It is
when she returns from this trip, which she takes after being cruelly
heart-broken, that Violet reveals the profoundly melancholic aspect to her
nature, which up to this point has only been suggested. It is this sensitivity
that audiences identify as Stillman’s own which makes Damsels his most outlandish as well as his most compassionate and
authentic film to date.
Alice Butler
IFI
Damsels in Distress opens at the IFI this Friday, April 27th. For more information and bookings, please contact our box Office on 01 679 3477, or book online: http://www.ifi.ie/film/damsels-in-distress/
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