![]() Choose your romantic role models selectivelyĭisney crops up often in the film, whether in reference to how Bambi's popularity justifies shifts in opinion on environmental practice, or in debates over how Lady and the Tramp serves as a tacky, depressing primer to love and marriage. “All that affected, sexy seductress slinking around, Uncle Scrooge is sexy? Do you think I’m an idiot?” Later on, his moral high-ground collapses as it emerges that he has given her two STIs, but still, Alice's experience is evidence, if ever it was needed, that you should accept friends' advice with cynicism.ģ. “Why is it that when people have sex with strangers on their mind, their IQ just drops like 40 points?” he says. On their next meeting, Alice receives a sanctimonious lecture from him on her behaviour. “Looove Uncle Scrooge!” They then proceed to dance, awkwardly but somewhat skillfully, to the lawyer’s bedroom. “There’s something really sexy about Scrooge McDuck” she says of one of the key protagonists in the illustrated stories, swaying with abandon to Andrea True’s More, More, More and drinking Pernod. It's not until later, having taken the environmental lawyer home, that Alice employs Charlotte’s advice, commenting on his comic collection. “‘There’s something really sexy about strobe lights’, or, ‘this fabric is so sexy’.” “Whenever you can, throw the word ‘sexy’ into your conversation,” she offers. Accept advice from friends with a generous pinch of saltĬharlotte is liberal with her dating advice, and after the duo bump into two eligible Harvard graduates – an ad man and an environmental lawyer whom Alice had met previously at Sag Harbor on Long Island – she presents Alice with a gem to aid her in her seduction technique. Set in a club that may-or-may-not represent Studio 54, Stillman frames the broader context of this comedy of manners with a smokescreen of striving for admission, extended periods of dancing, and drawn-out conversations on style and social opportunity, creating, in the process, a 1990s cult classic of epic proportions.Ģ. She and colleague Charlotte, played by Kate Beckinsale, navigate the complicated alleyways of female friendship and the social pecking orders of New York’s ailing disco scene alongside their affected, aspiring WASP love interests. The Last Days of Disco is told from the point of view of Alice, played by the inimitable Chloë Sevigny, a graduate from a prestigious college working as a reader for a publishing house. A trilogy of films concerned with the lives of those on the verge of adulthood, laden with irony and hyperbole. The self-congratulatory earnestness with which characters attack such topics as sexist undertones in Disney's Lady and the Tramp, why VD might actually be a social asset, and the true meaning of Shakespeare's famous line “To thy own self be true” will certainly leave the viewer snickering (and thinking).Released in 1998 and set “sometime in the early 1980s,” The Last Days of Disco was director Whit Stillman’s third film – following Manhattan and Barcelona – and the conclusion of the director’s self-proclaimed “Doomed-Bourgeois-in Love” series. There are no explosions or plane crashes to be found, but nevertheless the film remains immensely interesting simply because of the interchanges between the characters. From Des (Eigeman), the hilariously sardonic club manager who dumps former girlfriends by claiming “he might be gay,” to Jimmy (Astin), the poor uncool young advertising exec who tries desperately to get his clients into the club, Stillman creates an ensemble of wonderfully entertaining neuroses. ![]() ![]() Shallow party-girl Charlotte (Beckinsale), a perfect reflection of the Me decade, looks out on the packed dance floor of the club of the second and informs her friend Alice (Sevigny) “We have a lot of choices.” This sense of youthful freedom and controlled hedonism are intoxicating to Charlotte and Alice's circle of friends who frequent the club. ![]() Group dynamics are clearly a fascination for Stillman, and as we follow the exploits and barbed conversations of his protagonists, it's easy to see why. Set in the early '80s amid disco's dying gasps, director/writer Stillman's new ensemble piece focuses on a group of twentysomethings recently transplanted to the social hotbed of Manhattan. Not to be confused with Boogie Nights, The Last Days of Disco does not feature prosthetic penises. Updated Febru| Infoplease Staff Director/Writer/Producer:Ĭhloe Sevigny, Kate Beckinsale, Chris Eigeman, Mackenzie Astin, Matt Keeslar, Robert Sean Leonard, Jennifer Beals, Matthew Ross, Tara Subkoff and David Thornton
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