Here's to "Damsels in Distress"

I think I finally get Whit Stillman. During one of my Criterion binges of yore, I stumbled across his first film, "Metropolis," which has nothing to do with Fritz Lang's, and I couldn't make heads or tails of it. Here were a group of young people who talked like dictionaries, going to various parties where they never did anything that looked like fun, dabbling in relationships, and having many, many long-winded and impenetrable conversations. Intimidated, I carefully ignored anything else he did for about ten years, which coincided with Stillman's own thirteen-year hiatus between his last film and his latest, "Damsels in Distress." This one I liked. I liked it a lot.

New freshman Lily (Analeigh Tipton) comes to the lovely Seven Oaks college, and is quickly adopted by a trio of older girls: Violet (Greta Gerwig), Rose (Megalyn Echikunwoke), and Heather (Carrie MacLemore). The trio aspire to be do-gooders, so they mind the campus suicide prevention center with a box of donuts, lead therapy groups where tap-dancing is the primary form of treatment, and crusade against the boorishness of certain campus traditions held dear by the school's male population. Violet is the ringleader, who dates a pleasant lunk named Frank (Ryan Metcalf). Lily, meanwhile, attracts the attention of two potential romantic partners: fast-talking Charlie (Adam Brody), and a European grad student, Xavier (Hugo Becker). Neither of them are quite what they seem.

It took a while for me to pick up on what Stillman was doing in "Damsels in Distress." This is college life through the lens of fantasy and nostalgia, existing in a world where a trio of the most earnestly preppie girls who ever lived are courted by potential beaus through civilized discourse, and believe that changing the world may just require a few scented soaps and starting a new international dance craze. At first I thought their overly formal and polite modes of conversation were anachronistic, but they weren't. Rather, all the dialogue is stylized to be overly literate and precise, even coming from less articulate characters like Frank. The rules of engagement between the sexes have been severely desexualized, though sex is certainly still in the picture. Under these conditions, the girls deal with typical, modern relationship troubles and interpersonal tensions. They talk and act like they're above the problems of the characters in every other college picture ever made, but they're not. In short, Stillman satirizes the hell out of the very East Coast intellectual milieu that he's best known for exploring.

And the nice thing is that he does it so very gently, without malice or snideness. Greta Gerwig, who is quickly becoming one of my favorite young actresses, is absolutely delightful as the ludicrous, self-important Violet. Here is a classic queen bee and utter snob, who is so sweetly sincere and so naïve in her convictions, I found it very hard to dislike her. In spite of all her affected superiority and practiced nonchalance, she falls victim to all the same pitfalls she warns Lily against. Sometimes Violet teeters on the edge of being too naïve to stand up to scrutiny, but Gerwig sells it with all she's got.

Alas, the other three actresses simply can't compete. I could hardly remember anything about Carrie MacLemore as Heather an hour after I finished the movie. Analeigh Tipton is bright and sympathetic, but seems to struggle to hit the comic notes in her material. Megalyn Echikunwoke is sadly underused as the hostile Rose, a transplanted Londoner who takes great pleasure in labeling every unworthy male a "playboy operator." While we're on the subject, the male half of the cast holds their own against the ladies, but are a little difficult to distinguish visually and none of them really stand out performance-wise either.

I think this is because Stillman's dialogue so dominates the picture. The visual style is interesting, with its period details and occasional graphic puns, but Stillman gives the bulk of his attention to the rapid fire, densely droll dialogue, from Violet taking Lily a tour of the campus and explaining the philosophy of her group, to the various relationships being built up and dissected, to several characters self-analyzing themselves when they hit rough patches. And like with Stillman's "Metropolis," occasionally I got lost. However, I found enough of the voluminous verbiage funny or clever or simply prodigious enough that it held my attention.

Moreover, there's an ease and a lightness to the picture that I appreciated. It doesn't take itself nearly as seriously as the characters take themselves, and even includes what can legitimately described as flights of fancy. Whit Stillman is clearly an acquired taste. I can easily see your stereotypical average filmgoer, used to a diet of Adam Sandler comedies, walking away from this with glazed eyes, mumbling vague threats against hipsters. However, if you know girls like Violet, or if you've ever been a Lily, "Damsels in Distress" may be the film for you.
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