The Last Days of Disco (1998)

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

USA conversationalist Whit Stillman's third feature, THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO trades on his personal experiences of NYC's disco-scene (salted with Harvard-disparaging quips) in the early 80s, ebulliently scrutinizing a coterie of freshly out-of-college yuppie-wannabes, who are habitually congregated in their common haunt, an unconscionably popular nightstand, meantime, their love life and career path wax and wane variably, signposted by its title when their disco days are unexpectedly being put paid to, time to grown up when reality bites. Alice (Sevigny), a self-contained sylph dithering about making the right decisions - don't be judgmental, be sexy, always at the bidding of her more popular but stuck-up friend Charlotte (a fresh-faced Beckinsale, looking ghastly under the slap), both girls work in the same publishing house and mingle with the likes of Tom (Leonard), a spiffy environmental lawyer, Jimmy (Astin), an enterprising adman, No.1 and No.2 prospects on Alice's infatuation list, then there are Josh (Keeslar), a young assistant district attorney and Des (Eigeman), a college-dropout who becomes one of the managers of the said nightclub, both take a fancy on the quiet but intelligent Alice.Gender study and sex politics are thrown into the mix where philandering and mendacity (using "gay excuse" to break off relationships), gender double standards (you are a titillating slut, I will not forfeit our chance of a one-night-stand, but afterwards, we are finished.), treacherous friendship (Beckingsale is totally in her wheelhouse as the paradigm of the so called "green tea bitch", avant la lettre), even venereal disease, collectively roil the dynamism of their pairing-off games, to somewhat wacky but consistently buoyant vibes, however, a byplay relative of an undercover police investigation is only patchily introduced as a frivolous plot device, fails to emphasize what is at stake, and the manic-depressive Josh, accorded with a forthright quirkiness and spontaneous elocution, potentially the most fascinating character among the posse, is wasted by the wooden, stilted performance from the blandly handsome Keeslar, whose recapitulation of the film's tenor near the finish-line comes off as a deleterious overkill.However, club-scene hasn't died out, has been continuing luring new generations of hipsters and scenesters with theme-specific variations to this day, over three decades later, THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO is, to each their own, a sparkling eulogy of Whitman's own youthful abandon and disillusion, and on a sociological level, a zeitgeist-reflecting conversation piece that thankfully doesn't belie its maker's undue conceit and guile.

I haven't even watched the whole movie yet but had to come on here to pay tribute to the music. The soundtrack is brilliant and totally fitting of the times and scenes that played out in the film. Was pleasantly surprised to see they even included the wonderful Techniques Queen Majesty in the piece.Ok, the story isn't as strong but the characters are engaging enough to keep you interested in watching, in my humble opinion.54 was released the same year and I guess got most of the attention and plaudits but this film is well worth a look

Disco died 40 odd years or so. Wilt Stillman's 'The Last Days of Disco' went public almost 20 years ago. If you remember the heady days of disco, Stillman's film is a pale ghost of those days. The real deals of the short life of disco that gay liberation and the drug culture and the turning of society's back on the long war in Vietnam, the mean days of Nixon and the fear that the best days of America had gone away. In way, Don McLean's 'American Pie' says it all in a way. The script poorly frame the period from putting its raw,rude face to the days of disco. The story narrowly focus on mostly self-centered 'golden youth' fall in and out of bed. Stillman lifts the veil of a group of recent university graduates, who come to New York to find a career, a husband or a wife and find a way to hook up for the night (and perhaps longer) for a roll in the hay. The young men are from Harvard,the women from a sister (Ivy League) school. Parents subsidize the women who cannot make ends meet, working as readers in a publishing house. Now if you know anything about New York in those heady days, rents were affordable,cheap restaurants... The group of friends of 'Last Days of Disco' are children the easy classes;they are accustomed to a life style and privileges that do not mirror the daily life of the working class, the lower middle classes and the like. Obliquely in the world of disco this 'golden youth' cuts obliquely through the prism of money, sex, marriage,greed and guilt and power. In a way, it naively paints a picture of suburban, well-heeled young people's fall from dignity...momentarily at least. Stillman offered a break through role for Chloe Sevigny who emerges scarred but successful. Kate Beckinsale seems born to the role of spoiler, who smashes all friendship if a rival at work or for a bed mate stand in her way. She plays the innocent when deliberately she blurts out Sevigny's character has the clap, even those the girls share a flat in the upper east side. The men are dismal but for one a lawyer who chase rainbows and are superficial,albeit Harvard graduates. Society then called them' yuppies' (upwardly mobile professionals). They foreshadowed the nest generation, in image and the terror of reality that at the end of film finds them at the labor exchange looking for work, but not Sevigny who begins to climb the world of publishing ladder to success. But the film never conveys the hopelessness that the millennials experience, no future, a life inferior to a style mum and dad and grandparents enjoyed. Stillman creates a disco that is a pale shadow of say a Studio 54; it is a toothless tiger of the days of disco: no hit of ubiquitous use of drugs, the wild abandon of sex in the loos. The absence of gays, beautiful people, the blacks and Latins who gave the disco days,the biting taste and lust. The saving grace is the music. A potpourri of the hits of Disco that set the feet tapping and gives you envy to stand up and dance. a And possibly in a reverie, dreaming that discover died or went away. And perhaps it didn't for you who went to a discotheque. Today in fast food burger spots, they pipe in the songs of Disco, as you chew your burger or sip your soft drink. The film offers no frisson, no shudder of delight. And there is no hint of AIDS that inhabited the discotheques, among other venues.

There's a bit of an ungainly plot, and you never buy into the period vibe it goes for, but the real problem with this Whit Stillman film as I see it is there aren't more of them to compare this to. Generally, "The Last Days Of Disco" presents a wonderfully hilarious multi-character piece that builds with multiple viewings.Alice (Chloë Sevigny) and Charlotte (Kate Beckinsale) are a pair of young assistants to assistant editors at a mid-sized Manhattan publisher, circa "The very early 1980s." How early? Disco is still going on, particularly in one local club frequented by the two girls and their college friends.Stillman movies always make for a certain disconnect. You can read it in the reviews here, about the dialogue that doesn't sound real, too term- paperish. I have another favorite writer who often has his characters speak in iambic pentameter, and I've learned to get over it. The problem with Stillman here is certainly not his inability to write clever, piquant dialogue."I still consider myself a loyal adherent to the disco movement?""It's a movement?""That's like something out of the Nazis!""Every time you made love to me, you must have wanted to vomit!""No, no, no. You're beautiful. You don't have to be some sweaty horny hetero he-ape to admire and appreciate female beauty.""Of course it's formulaic. It's a formula!""It's true, Des, your mouth does look gay."And for those people who say, not without merit, that Stillman can't come up with a decent piece of dialogue that doesn't involve twelve adverbs and six past imperfect verbs, I submit one from this movie that consists of a single letter: "H!"What "Disco" has going for it, beyond all else, is the performances of its two stars. Beckinsale is incredibly beautiful here playing a wonderfully coy and slightly evil American vixen. She's a b-word, but with a heart of silver, not insensitive to the effect of her slings, who wins our heart despite herself. "One thing I've learned is people hate being criticized," she says at one point, as if surprised herself at the insight.Sevigny is even better as the heart of the film, a gentle character whose reaction shots sell us on the story more than anyone else's words. Whether she's with the dicey but delicious Des (Stillman regular Chris Eigeman) or the quietly intense, somewhat unstable Josh (Matt Keeslar), Sevigny keeps your sympathies centered around her character to a degree no other lead in a Stillman film ever has.That's about the highest praise I can offer "Last Days," that Sevigny and Beckinsale represent the best female performances in a Stillman film. It's not as well-balanced as "Barcelona" or "Metropolitan," the two other films of Stillman's I've seen (and some of whose characters pop up here.) The disco music is welcome though the period atmosphere is lacking, as I see this as a product entirely of the 1990s, the decade in which it was made. And the joining of Alice and Charlotte's stories with that of the fall of a club which is but isn't Studio 54 doesn't gel as well as it could have.But speaking as a Stillman fan, I love this film every bit as much as his other two 20th-century offerings, even if I can't recommend it as unreservedly. He was rushing to get this out, and it shows. But there's no shame in being a Stillman fan like I am when this is his weakest film.