Party Girl

A film set in New York. Mary is in her twenties. She throws parties, is out at night, and does not work. One night the police take her in. An unlicensed party. Her godmother pays her bail. Judy works at a public library. Mary asks her for money. She gives her no money; she gives her a job. She will work as an assistant at the library. From there the film is a story of adjustment. Mary shelves books wrongly, is not quiet, and is rude to patrons. Then something happens. She learns the system. The Dewey Decimal Classification; numbers, subjects, subheadings. And she loves it. The narrative does not build this as a joke. She is genuinely good at it. She classifies her whole flat. Her clothes, her records, everything. The night life goes on at the same time. Clubs, clothes, friends and a money problem. There is Mustafa as well. He sells food in the street and trained as a teacher; he came from Lebanon. A relationship forms between them. What the narrative is interested in is not parties but order: its idea is that a person who obeys no rule finds peace in a strict system of classification. There is an examination as well. Mary wants to study librarianship. Judy does not believe she will. She makes a mistake at the end and is dismissed. The narrative builds no scene of deliverance; its ending is small and plausible. It was made on a very small budget and records the New York club scene of the nineties directly. The film screened at Sundance. Parker Posey became a known face of independent cinema through this part. Daisy von Scherler Mayer directed; it is her first feature. Parker Posey, Sasha von Scherler, Guillermo Díaz and Anthony DeSando are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes 1990s American independent cinema and character comedy. Who it is not for: anyone looking for plot; the narrative is loose and the film rests entirely on its lead's energy.