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Mike Wilmington

By Mike Wilmington Wilmington@moviecitynews.com

Posted Wednesday, July 25th, 2012 - 1 Comment »
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Wilmington on DVDs: The Last Days of Disco

 

THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO (Also Blu-ray) (Three and a Half Stars)
U.S.; Whit Stillman, 1998 (Criterion Collection)

Whit Stillman‘s best film — a portrayal of the latter days of the New York Disco scene, and of a club that looks suspiciously like Studio 54 — is a movie that manages to let us enjoy the sensuality and fun of  the era, and a lot of the then-trashed but still danceable disco music, and at the same time, see why it fell and why it prompted outraged middle or working class rockers to insist “Disco sucks.” Stillman’s milieu is a little conservative and smugly smart-ass for my tastes — that may be why the three main male characters, Chris Eigeman‘s Des, Matt Keeslar’s Josh and Mackenzie Astin’s Jimmy, are, respectively, a squealer/disco employee, a prosecutor out to bust everyone and a failed adman, and why the only leftist character is a fool,  and why everyone tends to be so proudly, relentlessly trivial and self-serving. (And well-dressed.) But Stillman knows these people inside out (their life-style motto seems to be “Let us eat cake”) and his dialogue is unfailingly smart and hip.

Chloe Sevigny and Kate Beckinsale are Alice and Charlotte, the two girls on the prowl: less richly ironic and meaty and funny as characters maybe, but looking terrific and acting the roles up to a high sheen. “Last Days” also boasts a disco score so jam-packed with period hits that it reminds you of George Lucas’ wall-to-wall ’60s rock backdrop in American Graffiti. Sadly, it doesn’t include my own personal favorite among disco inferno anthems, Thelma Houston‘s artfully intense “Don‘t Leave Me this Way.” (Go to Richard Brooks’ Looking for Mr. Goodbar for that one.) But Stillman makes up for that lack by referencing the great Disney comics genius Carl Barks, and Barks’ zillionaire money-bin-diving creation, Uncle Scrooge McDuck (another conservative I like).

Extras: Commentary by Stillman, Eigeman and Sevigny; four deleted scenes; featurette; trailer; reading by Stillman; booklet with David Schickler essay.

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One Response to “Wilmington on DVDs: The Last Days of Disco”

  1. Andrew S says:
    July 26, 2012 at 5:03 pm

    It’s funny people love this movie so much now. I was always a huge fan – but when it came out it wasn’t reviewed that well and was considered far inferior to Metropolitan and even Barcelona. I am glad that the film has aged well and has had a renewed life recently.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

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I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

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