The Last Days of Disco
Whit Stillman, USA, 1998, 114 mins; Warner Bros
Review by Gerald Houghton (1998)
It's surprising Woody Allen doesn't come up more when Whit Stillman's on the critical slab. Neither is much taken with action or particular visual stylising: it's words that count. Social not sexual intercourse exercises Stillman's two previous pictures: uppity coming-of-age comedy Metropolitan; and delirious Cold War yuppie burlesque Barcelona. His constituency are the UHB's ("urban haute bourgeoisie") he christened in Metropolitan, youngsters who use status, arrogance and bankrupt social codes to cushion real life. The Last Days of Disco doesn't break that mould.
Disco only really supplies Stillman's background. The time is the early 80s. The place, Manhattan's hippest disco (a sort of Pseudo 54; all the moves, less runaway sleaze), open to only the most painfully modish of party people. Naturally it attracts the two recently graduated trainee publishers editors played by Kate Beckinsale and Chloë Sevigny. Charlotte (Beckinsale, replete with impeccable accent) is brash, beautiful and full of herself. Alice (Sevigny) is more likeable, demure and maddeningly naive. Still, they become uneasy friends and even uneasier flatmates. Elsewhere, Des (Barcelona's Chris Eigeman) is an assistant manager in trouble for admitting disfavoured clientele (i.e. advertising execs) to the club.
There is sex ("furious pairing off"), and even some relative excitement when the place is finally busted, but otherwise it's yak-yak, end to end. About relationships, the sexual politics of Lady and The Tramp (an extraordinary piece of writing), and the significance of the music itself ("Disco will never die!"). In one memorable exchange Charlotte tells Alice to spice up her conversations with men with judicious use the word "sexy". "There's something really sexy about Scrooge McDuck," she later romantically declares.
Stillman likes to deal in character over stereotype, and despite a certain surface sameness (we have no hero, as such, simply degrees of arrogance), it's easy to get caught by the meagre drama of these spoilt lives. We can't come to care, maybe, but we can sympathise. Stillman is bravely prepared to make films without compassionate focus, and that's what makes him so special. It's what allows us to feel good about Barcelona even while Ted and Fred are such irredeemable shits. (Ted cameos here as a visitor to the club.)
For all their surface sheen of intellectual cool, then, Stillman's films are quietly, depressingly subversive. There is a smooth nostalgia to the terrific disco soundtrack (Evelyn 'Champagne' King, Chic, Blondie), but cut against the creeping realisation of the drug abuse, sexual disease and unemployment that finally did for that scene. That's where The Last Days of Disco plays like the final part of a dizzying trilogy - the one where those precious UHBs finally get their just desserts.