Last days of disco3/13/2023 ![]() Josh is allergic to irony or embarrassment, so he is the man who can say things like “ will always live in our minds and hearts.” It’s like the end of Uncle Vanya if it had been about a dance craze instead of deep existential disappointment. ![]() Earlier on he quoted the lyrics to a hymn at rapidfire speed, a recitation which only served to prove to Alice that something was wrong with him. Josh gives an impassioned eulogy for disco, which is very him he’s also the guy whose manic depression shows itself through religious expressions. The Last Days of Disco is a grim comedy, the okapi of movie genres, and while it’s a long way from funereal, it is often just as morbid as its title implies. Being serious at a disco is a sin, and most of these people can’t even sin in a way that they could laugh about the morning after. In a Whit Stillman movie, the ability to wink at oneself is as rare as the ability to shed one’s skin like a snake, and it’s neither of those are skills which the regulars at the club are able to indulge in. That should be a lighthearted conversation, but there’s too much of the characters in it Josh and Des are talking about themselves and they aren’t being shy about it. The most famous conversation in the movie is probably the surprisingly intense discussion of whether or not the Tramp of Lady and the Tramp is a junkyard freeloader who will never change his ways or a sympathetic fellow who works to improve himself. There’s too much cattiness from Charlotte, too much anxiety from Jimmy and Alice, too much awkwardness from Josh (Matt Keeslar). Alice smiles and Tom half-smiles, but those are as controlled and practiced as their whitefolks dance moves. It is marginally effective.) Alice and Tom dance together to “Knock on Wood,” which is a jam, and neither one of them seems so excited. (He does his best to get out of clingy relationships by pretending he’s had a revelation of his own homosexuality. Des (Eigeman) needs Quaaludes as much as anyone else in the ’80s ever did, although he could probably manage his anxiety better by making humane choices about women. There’s some dancing and drinking and a few half-smiles, but it’s hard to look at Alice or Charlotte or Jimmy (Mackenzie Astin) or Tom (Robert Sean Leonard) and see people who are having a good time. ![]() Conversely, the more we know about people, the more likely it is that they are just miserable. There are plenty of people in the club who appear to be having a great time, but we don’t know anything about them. ![]() To Charlotte, it’s a statement not of how awkward it is for a pair of would-be adults to be holding Daddy’s hand, but an insight into the expensive world of Manhattan apartments. Someone makes a joke later on in the film about the two of them getting help from their dads for their rental, but neither one is bashful about it. They are as insecure about getting into a Studio 54-style disco as Leroy is about being functionally illiterate. Somewhere not so far away, Alice and Charlotte (Sevigny and Beckinsale) are grabbing a cab to improve their chances of getting into a club. The New York of Fame is seedy and tough think of that scene where Gene Anthony Ray goes off into this dark, wet landfill of a demolished city block to try to read a Maytag ad. The Last Days of Disco is concurrent with another New York movie which I think of as being really essential to the filmic history of the Big Apple: Fame. Disco is many things, but first and foremost it is meant to be a good time, an unironic and sparkly oasis in an unforgiving setting. Obviously, this is a tricky line to walk in a discotheque, perhaps to the point of being self-defeating. No one with a name seems able to have fun in The Last Days of Disco, and no one is keen to expose him- or herself as a genuine human being. Starring Chloe Sevigny, Chris Eigeman, Kate Beckinsale
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