Of all the places to set a social comedy in the style of Jane Austen, perhaps the last would be a disco in early 1980s New York. But 18 years ago, the American writer-director Whit Stillman did exactly that with his wonderfully funny and acute The Last Days of Disco. Stillman's first film Metropolitan (1990) followed the tangled love lives of a group of intelligent and idealistic New Yorkers. Filmed on a shoe-string, it was nominated for an Oscar. His next film Barcelona (1994) transplanted similar members of the self-described UHBs (Urban Haute Bourgeoisie) to Europe. The Last Days of Disco is the third in his trilogy of these “comedies of mannerlessness,” as Stillman has called them. On Saturday there was a showing at the Barbican, followed by a Q&A with Stillman and actor/director Richard Ayoyade.
Stillman has been characterised as a WaspWoody Allen. There are some similarities between the directors. Stillman’s films are talkative and witty, like Allen’s, and are usually set in a closed milieux the director knows well—in Stillman’s case the Harvard-educated upper classes. But the moral texture of his films are quite different. Allen embraces a liberal, humanistic worldview in which the sexual revolution is a joyful—though complex—achievement. By contrast, Stillman is sceptical of the sexual revolution, is impatient with liberal pieties, and retains a faith in the power of grace. One critic has even called him a “Great Conservative Filmmaker.” That’s going too far: he is too subtle a filmmaker to advocate a political ideology. Yet it is undeniable that for his characters concepts such as “moral virtue,” “character,” “gentlemanliness” and “self-restraint” are far from outdated ideals.
The Last Days of Disco follows two young women fresh out of college: the gauche Alice (Chloë Sevigny) and the confident Charlotte (Kate Beckinsale). Surveying the dancing masses at the disco, Charlotte says to Alice: “We’re in complete control. Look down: there’s a lot of choices out there.” Like Austen’s Emma Woodhouse does with Harriet Smith, the worldly-wise Charlotte advises Alice how to find a partner. She should drop the Kindergarten teacher look, she says, and stop being so “moralistic and judgmental.” She should make herself more attractive to guys by dropping the word “sexy” into conversation. Like, “This fabric is so sexy.”
That same night Alice goes home with a handsome environmental lawyer called Tom. At his apartment, she discovers he collects old Scrooge McDuck comics. Alarm bells should be ringing. Earlier she had asserted that comic book writers were overrated in popular culture. But instead of engaging him in conversation and risk getting all “judgmental,” she follows Charlotte’s advice and says: “There’s something really sexy about Scrooge McDuck.”
The scene is excruciating and hilarious—Sevigny plays it beautifully. Despite Alice's apparent devil-may-care attitude, though, there's a moment of uncertainty when she stands at Tom’s bedroom door. Stillman frames the scene so that she steps from the light into the darkness. Sure enough, when she next meets Tom in the disco he accuses her of being a slut for sleeping with him so quickly. He has also given her an STD.
Alice’s redemption comes in the form of Josh—a prosecutor investigating dodgy dealings at the disco. (It’s typical of Stillman that the hero is a prosecutor and the cad an environmentalist.) Josh has suffered from manic depression and Alice is told to avoid him because he might be unstable. Yet he is firm about his honourable intentions. (“I’m the kind of guy who
does take no for an answer.”) Theirs is a slow-moving meeting of minds: in fact, just like the romantic protagonists of
Metropolitan, we don’t even see them kiss. Instead they dance to disco music on the New York subway, their bodies moving in choreographed unison, as though they sizing each other up at Netherfield ball.
During the Q&A, Richard Ayoyade asked “how grace operates in this film.” Stillman, dressed in the same preppy suit and tie his male characters sport, replied that “it operates as it always operates—touching everybody.” There is a moment when Kate Beckinsale’s character sings "Amazing Grace," while we see Alice going to the pharmacist for treatment. The juxtaposition at first seems ironic and the audience laughed; but then it grows into something more moving.
Ayoyade picked up another distinctive aspect of Stillman’s films. Most romantic comedies act as a sort of “wish-fulfilment” for the audience by focusing on the couple’s individual desires. But Stillman, he said, was more interested in the group dynamic. For him “the romantic element requires a letting go.” Stillman agreed that his films were about “searching for your personal identity through your love life… within the group and outside the group—and maybe changing groups.”
“People are often troubled at a young age,” said Stillman. “There is an irrational depression in people aged 16-25… and the group can help you get out of that.” I wondered whether Stillman’s idea of the group—as as force for stability, and something you need to shape yourself in relation to—is similar to Austen’s idea of “society.” To achieve happiness in her novels you not only need to be a good romantic match, but also go with the grain of what society expects. (An exception is
Mansfield Park).
This theme is alluded to when Alice says to Charlotte: “I’m beginning to think that maybe the old system, of people getting married based on mutual respect and shared aspirations, and slowly, over time, earning each other’s love and admiration, worked the best.” Charlotte replies, “Well, we’ll never know.” This is not a nostalgic endorsement of an earlier era (well, not
only a nostalgic endorsement), more a questioning of modern mores by comparing them with how things used to be done. As a character says in
Metropolitan, in reply to someone who says Austen’s world seems absurd: “Has it ever occurred to you, that today, looked at from Jane Austen’s perspective, would look even worse?"
Appropriately, Stillman’s next film, released in May, is an Austen adaptation,
Love and Friendship. Pleasingly, it also stars Chloë Sevigny and Kate Beckinsale. I’m certainly looking forward to it. But I wonder if Stillman will be too comfortable in period drama. The contrast between the hedonistic disco world and the moral idealism of its protagonists is what gives
The Last Days of Disco its sharp-edged originality.
