The Last Days of Disco Movie Trailer. Leave it to Whit Stillman, in completing the beguiling, literate trilogy that includes ”Metropolitan” and ”Barcelona,” to begin a film about the New York nightclub scene of the early 1980’s with a caste distinction and a lofty show of utter confidence.
At a disco entrance presided over by the usual elitist doorman, Charlotte (Kate Beckinsale) makes only the teensiest concession to self-doubt. She and her college chum Alice (Chloe Sevigny) decide to arrive in a cab rather than on foot, but that hardly matters; stunning, assured Charlotte might as well float in on a cloud.
”We look really good tonight,” she tells the less secure Alice. ”I’m sure we’re going to get in.” She ought to be. Mr. Stillman’s smart, patrician characters have their worries, but social acceptability is seldom one of them.
In ”The Last Days of Disco,” he is again concerned with the youthful malaise of the privileged, and he once again renders his characters’ fretfulness in deft, funny and improbably touching ways. Wild nights of the disco age are not dealt with here, because this is not a film about wild characters. It’s about tame ones who poignantly, in the brief spell of liberation between the end of college and the start of serious careers, may be experiencing more fun and freedom than they ever will again.
If this film, which falls chronologically between the other two, doesn’t fully rise to the lovely vibrancy of ”Barcelona,” it still extends the witty, quizzical style of Mr. Stillman’s social comedies onto inviting new terrain. ”The Last Days of Disco,” in the works long before disco revivals became the rage on screen, is sincerely nostalgic without campiness. It sees night life as an escape hatch for straight-arrow revelers who loved the club scene even if they didn’t attract attention there, and who could be labeled as yuppies if they didn’t quibble about the term.
Young and urban, yes; but as one of the film’s many talkative, hair-splitting characters points out, none of them is enough of a success to qualify as a professional. ”I think for a group to exist,” says somebody, examining graffiti that reads ”Kill Yuppie Scum,” ”someone has to admit to being part of it.”
Humorously and fondly, with an entertaining supply of what he has called ”prosaic license,” Mr. Stillman again displays a pitch-perfect ear for both the cattiness and the camaraderie that bind his characters into collective friendship. (The film inveighs against the ”ferocious pairing off” that is sure to tear the group apart.) Weaving together the disco backdrop (clearly a labor of love) with more sharp-edged material about college graduates finding their first footing in New York and learning to cook with Campbell’s mushroom soup, he creates a bright panorama of shrewd young strivers.
These range from the showstopping Charlotte, played by the English Ms. Beckinsale with a persuasive American accent, to Chris Eigeman’s fretful Des, who works at the club. Having starred in each of Mr. Stillman’s films (and characters from the other two make cameo appearances here), Mr. Eigeman makes the filmmaker a perfect mouthpiece who can brood amusingly about anything, no matter how petty. Here he plumbs the psychological subtext of ”Lady and the Tramp.”
Ms. Sevigny, of ”Kids,” is seductively demure and a perfect foil for arrogant, meddlesome Charlotte. (Ms. Beckinsale was Jane Austen’s Emma for British television and displays that same high-handedness here.) Among the men, who sound alike and share the same persnickety thought processes.
Mackenzie Astin plays a dancing junior adman who wins points at work for getting clients into the disco, while Robert Sean Leonard makes a dashing environmental lawyer. The film argues that his generation’s concern for environmental causes can be traced to the revival of ”Bambi” during its formative years.
Matt Keeslar, Matthew Ross and Tara Subkoff round out the group of friends, while David Thornton plays the club’s owner with suitable shadiness. As someone says about his now-quaint business practices: ”To me, shipping cash in canvas bags to Switzerland doesn’t sound honest.”
The Last Days of Disco (1998)
Directed by: Whit Stillman
Starring: Chloë Sevigny, Kate Beckinsale, Chris Eigeman, Matt Keeslar, Mackenzie Astin, Matthew Ross, Tara Subkoff, Michael Weatherly, Robert Sean Leonard, Jennifer Beals
Screenplay by: Whit Stillman
Production Design by: Ginger Tougas
Cinematography by: John Thomas
Film Editing by: Andrew Hafitz, Jay Pires
Costume Design by: Sarah Edwards
Set Decoration by: Lisa Nilsson
Art Direction by: Molly Mikula
Music by: Mark Suozzo
MPAA Rating: R for some elements involving sexuality and drugs.
Distributed by: Gramercy Pictures
Release Date: June 12, 1998
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