By: Lani
If you’re my age, you remember certain things about the 90’s. A lot of these things transcend generational lines, like Titanic, the Macarena and owning a pair of Guess jeans (I got my pair at a resale shop). But mainly you remember things marketed towards children, things on Nickelodeon, or if you’re parents were loaded (or like me, your dad worked for the cable company), Cartoon Network.
We don't even like each other!
However, if you’re in your early 20’s, I’m willing to bet, you definitely don’t remember the Whit Stillman movie The Last Days of Disco. Actually, I’m not sure if anyone remembers it. Well, besides the Criterion people, who added it to their DVD collection (supposedly one of the best collections in the world… supposedly) and the programming people on the Style Network, who’ve been playing it in the late night slot for the past month. I’ve caught the movie (from different random points) a few times.
Jarvis is judging you.
The Last Days of Disco is one of those things from the 90’s that I’m just now experiencing, over 10 years after the fact, like the band Pulp. I had heard of Pulp a few times, mainly mentions of the William Shatner version of ‘Common People’ on Vh1, (did you know buying into something for the sake of irony existed before 2003? ME EITHER). I had to come around to listening to them (and loving them) on my own. Now I can’t stop listening to Pulp. Once I had a revelation while listening to “Common People”, but I don’t remember it now. Unlike my affection for Pulp, The Last Days of Disco did not fill me with second hand nostalgia.
The Last Days of Disco is supposed to take place in the “very early 80’s,” but it’s totally 90’s. It stars Chloe Sevigny and Kate Beckinsale for Christ’s sake… and that guy that dated Lorelei in ‘Gilmore Girls’ …and that other guy that was Mandy Moore’s future brother-in-law in How to Deal… you know, people who hold zero social relevance anymore.
Like almost all of Pulp’s songs, The Last Days of Disco tells the [melodramatic, boring] stories of a small group of young people: their trials, their tribulations, their love affairs. And in an attempt to add more subtext, the whole thing is set against New York City in the disco days of Studio 54.
Like almost all of Pulp’s songs, The Last Days of Disco tells the [melodramatic, boring] stories of a small group of young people: their trials, their tribulations, their love affairs. And in an attempt to add more subtext, the whole thing is set against New York City in the disco days of Studio 54.
Chloe Sevigny plays Alice, the “narrator” of the story. She says less than the assholes that surround her, but we get to see Stillman torment her the most. Alice and her coworker/roommate Charlotte (Beckinsale), both work at a publishing house and spend their free time going to the discos. They have a third roommate, but she says nothing of value. Because she’s a woman, duh… She just goes on dates with assholes that make Alice and Charlotte ~judge~ her - not that they really have any room to do so.
Can't you see the torment in her eyes?! ... or at least the boredum...
Alice has a one-night-stand with another disco goer, played by Dr. Wilson, I mean Robert Sean Leonard, and Alice contracts herpes and gonorrhea from him. It’s later revealed that Alice was a virgin before this roll in the hay with Dr. Wilson.:
Alice Kinnon: If when making love, the man... *spurts*... outside the woman, does that count as sexual intercourse?
Tom Platt: "Spurts"?
Alice Kinnon: If it... *squirts* outside, without getting in... does that count as losing your virginity?
Tom Platt: No part of the man got in at any time?
Alice Kinnon: I don't think so.
Tom Platt: I think part has to get in to be considered sexual intercourse.
Alice Kinnon: So then I was a virgin.
That’s right, if you surrender your purity, you must suffer! Alice tries to keep her V.D. on the D.L., but Charlotte, the bitch, blows her cover. Right in front of all their “friends” too.
Charlotte, Queen Bitch Face
And that’s the thing that struck me most about this film; Charlotte and Alice pretty much hate each other. They are each other’s foils and they’re companions with each other because they went to [a “prestigious”/expensive] college together and work together, but they don’t really like each other at all. It’s all about convenience with them. Honestly, I have been in a relationship like that. My best friend growing up and I were exactly like this. We grew to not even like each other, have almost nothing in common, but we couldn’t face school alone. We just needed someone to commiserate with and it didn’t hurt that the other person lived on the same block. Of course our friendship ended in a big blow-out, just like Alice and Charlotte.
Actually it’s hard to believe that anyone in this film likes each other. The characters are just not likeable. They’re not even endearing in the quirky-amusing way that Juno and every other character is today. They’re all just assholes and I guess that’s a form of “realism.” They’re all just like the people in Pulp’s songs. Except, because Jarvis Cocker isn’t narrating, it’s hard to feel anything for these hollow shells called people. The dialog is painful, but not because it’s particularly bad (except for Charlotte’s line: “You and Holly are the first female friends I’ve ever had!”), but because it’s hard to watch these people interact so rudely with each other.
...I'm so ashamed to be seen with you...
The whole thing is set in the Disco Clubs of the late 70’s and early 80’s, but that becomes inconsequential, because the characters never dance on screen (except in the subway), they’re never shown enjoying the fun parts of “clubbing” (assuming that there are fun aspects of it). They usually lounge around languorously, drink and bullshit. They talk about the kind of stuff you’d expect from recent college grads, gossip, drugs, and one particularly “deep” conversation about whether or not people can “really” change and the effects of media.
[Josh describes Lady and the Tramp]
Josh Neff: [referring to Lady and the Tramp] There is something depressing about it, and it's not really about dogs. Except for some superficial bow-wow stuff at the start, the dogs all represent human types, which is where it gets into real trouble. Lady, the ostensible protagonist, is a fluffy blond Cocker Spaniel with absolutely nothing on her brain. She's great-looking, but - let's be honest - incredibly insipid. Tramp, the love interest, is a smarmy braggart of the most obnoxious kind - an oily jailbird out for a piece of tail, or... whatever he can get.
Charlotte Pingress: Oh, come on.
Josh Neff: No, he's a self-confessed chicken thief, and all-around sleazeball. What's the function of a film of this kind? Essentially as a primer on love and marriage directed at very young people, imprinting on their little psyches the idea that smooth-talking delinquents recently escaped from the local pound are a good match for nice girls from sheltered homes. When in ten years the icky human version of Tramp shows up around the house, their hormones will be racing and no one will understand why. Films like this program women to adore jerks.
Well, in that case, films like The Last Days of Disco program young people to adore the sounds of their own bullshit, write it down and make a movie out of it. (That is what mumblecore is right)? Whit Stillman has had an influence on some formally young people, who are now formidable directors. Stillman is said to have influenced Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach, and I get it, but I feel like this is the best case of Godard’s idea of “It’s not where you take things from—it’s where you take them to.” Sure, both Anderson and Baumbach write about upper-middle/upper class white people with emotional problems, but they take Stillman-esque characters to a different place than Stillman. Anderson takes them to the story-book absurd and Baumbach takes them to a place where they can be emotionally “real” (instead of just assholes spouting opinions).
It’s not hard to picture any of these characters being taken aside, by JC (no not that one, this one) and told to pretend they don’t have money, pretend they never went to school. And that’s what it boils down to: these people have enough money to live in the city (even if they have a few roommates) and they have jobs and they are upwardly mobile (ie- not common people). They do cocaine and they don’t have to pay for it. They dance and drink and screw, but not because there is nothing left to do, or because their lives have slipped out of view. They do all this because they can afford it and nothing more is expected of them. And because it is Disco.
No matter how much Alice and Charlotte and the gang hate each other, I hope they can resolve their issues enough to meet up at some point in the future, say The Year 2000.
Listen to Whit Stillman talk about the commercial failure of The Last Days of Disco.
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