REVIEW: Damsels in Distress (2012)

There was reason to be excited.  Metropolitan, Whit Stillman's comedy from 1990, was one of the best debut films to come out of the American independent film boom, even as it stuck out like a sore thumb from the moment it arrived.  Most independent films from that era to tackle American youth, from She's Gotta Have It to Stranger Than Paradise to Slacker to Clerks, centered on characters who were hip, or at least pop-culture-savvy.  Metropolitan's subject is a group of upper class, stuck-in-time Manhattan preppies: incredibly wealthy, impossibly mannered, insular by definition, and slowly realizing that adult lives await—and that the ladder of American social mobility leaves a lot of room to fall.  It is, in short, proudly and defiantly square.  And as for pop culture...well, they do spend a fair amount of time talking about Jane Austen novels.

The film was made on a shoestring budget, most of which was presumably spent on tuxedos, and it starred a perfectly-cast group of unknowns and non-professionals who sadly never got any bigger than the occasional TV guest appearance.  But most of all, it had a terrific, literary script.  By literary, I don't mean the references to Austen, but rather the rich layering of character and incident.  In even the shortest scenes and most minor characters of Metropolitan, you can see warmth, pathos, and little bits of wisdom passed from the adult writer to his post-adolescent characters.  Square or not, it has as much to say about youth aimlessness and anxiety as any of its peers.  Stillman was nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, which is the best a film like this can do, and he went on to make two more, Barcelona (1994) and The Last Days of Disco (1998).  Both were very much in the same vein, and the concern arose whether Stillman could only really make one type of movie.  And then he dropped off the map, and the concern became whether he had another movie in him at all.

Damsels in Distress arrives as Stillman's first film in over a decade, with a title announcing its intentions to be as old-fashioned as anything the man has done.  The plot centers on a group of female undergrads, led by mother hen Violet (Greta Gerwig), who've taken it upon themselves to civilize (and odorize) the frat-dominated campus.  It's a promising choice of material for the director, setting the anachronism of his characters and dialogue against 21st century college life.  But more than that, it's an ode to innocent simplicity.  Violet and co. regularly volunteer at the local Suicide Prevention Center, where their chief form of therapy for depression is tap-dancing.  Indeed, Violet imagines that the greatest contribution that she (or anyone) can make to human civilization is starting a new dance craze.  The central theme is clear: life's biggest problems can be met with life's little pleasures, from dancing to bath soap to proper color coordination.  It's a noble sentiment, and it deserves a film of its own.

Regretfully, the film we have is something of a mess: the kind of awkward narrative that feels simultaneously too long and like pieces have been cut out of it.  Subplots and characters are truncated, while some comic scenes go on far beyond the joke's shelf life.  So where Metropolitan was a model of tight eloquence, Damsels fumbles with characters and tone, combining various plot elements that the writer-director doesn't seem fully in control of.  Part of this is the setting, or at least the way the setting is played: in Metropolitan, the behavior and mannerisms found their perfect aesthetic home in posh, softly photographed Manhattan apartments that seemed anything but sterile.  In a vibrantly colorful college campus, its effect is more jarring, and risks tipping over the edge into hyper-tasteful kitsch.  It's entirely possible that Stillman, who was never known as a visual filmmaker and never needed to be one, could use a certain lo-fi element: the clearer and brighter it gets, the less organic it feels.

Still, if it's not a comeback, it's at least a return.  Stillman remains one of our most idiosyncratic writers, and Damsels, beneath the clutter, does shows signs of his talent: the empathy with young men and especially women who are trying to figure things out; a willingness to mix darker subject matter into what first appears so light and feel-good; and, most of all, a knack for working on an intimate scale.  Even in his lesser films, like The Last Days of Disco, you see a man who doesn't feel the need to force big climaxes—the endings simply leave you with the feeling that the lives of these characters will go on, but new paths are open to them, and everything will be okay.  It's a shame that these elements don't shine through in Damsels as gracefully as in the past.  But I'm glad he's back, and here's hoping the next one doesn't take so long.

In the meantime, see Metropolitan.

2 out of 5 stars.

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Damsels in Distress is playing in select theaters.