The Last Days of Disco

Whit Stillman draws a group portrait of early 1980s Manhattan: graduates working the lowest rung in publishing who spend their nights at the hardest club in the city to get into, where they fall in love with each other, use each other and never stop appraising each other. The club is drawn largely from Studio 54 and from Stillman's own youth. The pleasure is the talk. These people argue about everything, and in the most quoted scene one of them makes a completely straight case that Lady and the Tramp deformed the romantic instincts of an entire generation. Chloë Sevigny and Kate Beckinsale play two versions of the same milieu, one forever explaining herself, the other never apologising for anything. It closes the loose trilogy Stillman began with Metropolitan and Barcelona. The catch is that most of these characters are privileged and pleased with themselves, and the film declines to defend them. That refusal shuts some viewers out completely. Who it is for: people who love films that run on conversation. Who it is not for: anyone looking for someone to root for.