the Whit Stillman Poll

man I thought LDOD was so wonderful and Barcelona so dull!

I would recommend watching Metropolitan, Aimless, before you give up on him. It's my favorite.

'damsels in distress' was on film 4 last night. it was hard to know what to make of it. there's an off-putting stilted implausibility to it but greta gerwig plays the part of a daffy snob to perfection. i would have watched it all but it was late and i was too tired.

man, chloe sevigny in last days! i can't even!!

“East Hampton seagulls are complete morons.”

I was chuckling to myself the other day thinking about the railroad apartment stuff in TLDoD.

metropolitan >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

so YOU'RE one of those Criterion edition snobs!

I don’t watch movies. I prefer a good Criterion essay. That way you get both the filmmaker’s ideas as well as the critic’s thinking.

I posted about Last Days above, eight years ago, when I saw Whit Stillman introduce it. I watched it today in advance of a Zoomcast on disco movies.

"I probably liked it as much as I can like a film where every conversation sounds like lines being read." I should narrow that down. Chloe Sevigny's good; she seems like an actual person. Kate Beckinsdale and most of the others are okay--not anybody I know in real life, but they work in the context of the film. The guy I can't stand is the Des character. Not just the character, who I realize isn't supposed to be likeable--I mean the performance, too. Everything. The film would immediately be improved by a performance with a little shading there.

"Great music, of course, and excellent Demme-like coda." The soundtrack is often great, even if it's like a Time-Life disco collection--other than the absence of Donna Summer, the Bee Gees, and a couple of others, it's the Most Famous Mainstream Disco Songs throughout. The two really great musical bits for me are, again, the coda (even though he inserts a cut I don't really get) and Chic's "Everybody Dance."

It's weird how all the gay and black and outlandish Studio-54 characters are relegated to the edge of the frame, while these Whit Stillman types work out their Whit Stillman dramas in the midst of it all. But I guess better that he films what he knows than fake his way through something else. Josh's big disco-will-never-die speech at the end is funny, even if it's nestled in so many layers of irony I'm not sure how to take it.

I was going to post Kate Beckinsdale/Parker Posey on the I-get-them-mixed-up thread, till I was reminded that that's about name confusion.

I never saw Barcelona, but I would say his 2010s films are more amusing than the ones from the 90s. He's stopped pretending to be a realist, and the colourful art direction helps me swallow the archness. He can't direct anything other than people talking to one another, though; he's like the patrician Kevin Smith.

Metropolitan is a movie I can watch over and over and over.

― windy = white, carl = black (polyphonic)

especially at this time of year

I watched Metropolitan for the first time since (maybe?) when it first came out (I've been revisiting some '80s / early '90s movies). It was cute and enjoyable – the dialogue is funny, without being too overbearing or precious (not an easy feat, considering the specifics). There are a few real laughs, and the screenplay was clearly polished.

It does have a few issues, though – the movie begins with a brief scene that suggests the rest of the story is a flashback, but the "framing narrative" doesn't come back up at the end(?). Also, the most interesting character disappears 2/3 of the way through. The movie ends somewhat abruptly, and feels like it needed at least one more scene to wrap up both these loose ends. Maybe it was an artistic choice (on both counts), but it leaves the impression that maybe they just ran out of money...

Also, the direction and "tech specs" are mighty ruff; just a few notches above a student film (that's a true indie, I guess). I assume Stillman's directing got better – I think I saw his next two films, but don't remember much about them. He does get good (if somewhat stilted) performances out of this cast, who seem to have been mostly amateurs.

You need to watch his last two films.

What is it with Stillman's dialogue where specific scenes finally become hilarious the 10th or 11th time you hear them? The one from Barcelona is my current fave:

Ted Boynton: There's a lot of anti-NATO feeling here.

Fred: Anti what?

Ted Boynton: Anti-NATO.

Fred: ANTI-NATO?

Ted Boynton: Yeah... Well, actually here it's OTAN.

Fred: They're AGAINST OTAN?

A friend of mine mildly admired Metropolitan until I told him that it is intended to be a period piece. He preferred it as the story of an anachronistic group of sheltered, cultured young people in the late 80s.
Though I suspect Stillman is sloppy about chronology, the mention of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie would have to make it at least 1972.

isn't there a boombox in one of the final scenes in metropolitan?

Stillman wanted to set the film in the past, possibly in the pre-Woodstock 1960s, but the budget did not allow for a strict period film to be made. Instead, he added period details to give the film an "aura of the past", like vintage Checker Cabs, and generally excluded anything too specific to the present day.

that period ambiguity elevates the film to a classic, and also adds a surreal element that, for example, Damsels In Distress intentionally heightens

(which is also mandatory viewing)

Were there car-rental chains in the '60s?

There may be one or two vintage cabs (which I think were still on the road anyway?), but also regular, late-model taxis... nothing in the movie struck me as ambiguous in terms of time period. Also, the characters' central concerns – decline of their social status, changing social norms – seemed specific to the late '80s, and sync up well with the end of the Reagan era (recession is mentioned). But maybe people like that, to the extent they "really exist," would have had the same anxiety in the '60s. Maybe they still do today!

They're obviously a weird, cloistered sect but (IMO) it's almost more "fun" to imagine them existing like that in the '80s than it would be if Stillman had the $$$ to achieve a period setting.

There have been car rental chains for about as long as there have been cars. Hertz goes back to the 20s, at least.

idk I took the timeline seriously. If the film came out in 1990, then the film is set in the early to mid '80s. The anachronism of deb balls coincides with the Reagan era's sudden interest in silly costumed customs.

i put it (anachronisms aside) in the late 60s or so, to jibe with audrey rouget's appearance in the last days of disco. obviously the taylor nichols character in tldod and barcelona is a time traveler or djinn of some sort. this is now WSCU (whit stillman cinematic universe) canon.