REVIEW: Damsels in Distress

★★★½☆

After a 14 year absence from filmmaking, Whit Stillman's singular voice returns to rosy form in what must be his most peculiar, yet most accessible and comedic work to date. The radiantly lit Damsels in Distress beams with primary colours and a particular kind of joie de vivre, the type that’s fuelled by verbose repartés of slight witticisms that might put off many viewers not hip to Stillman’s middle-class sangfroid. But those willing to submerge in its ambling pace of emergent pleasures and fleeting musings will find an experience that’s wholly unique.

Damsels occupies much of its time in the fictitious campus of Seven Oaks, an up-scale, ivy league type academy home to many stone-pillared, neoclassical buildings and red bricked fraternity houses. There the titular damsels roam—a clique-ish trio of pretty young ladies unofficially lead by the wistful Violet Wister (Greta Gerwig), who dress and act as if they’ve stepped directly out of a 1960s MGM musical. Despite their comely appearances and outward virtuosity, they each seem to have a screw or two loose: Rose (Megalyn Echikunwoke) enunciates her distrust in men with a curiously affected British accent, Carrie MacLemore’s Heather has a childlike inquisitiveness that is at once both endearing and worryingly airheaded, and Violet, the most enterprising of the group, is fiercely convicted to a range of self-made ideals, whether admirable (her main major seems to be helping wayward souls at the local Suicide Prevention Centre) or just plain nonsensical (a later whim to improve the wellbeing of frathouse denizens begins and ends with the distribution of free soap).

Another one of Violet’s early plans to ease a new student into the Seven Oaks environment leads her to befriend Lily (Analeigh Tipton), a more down to earth realist who spends much of her time onscreen with her arms crossed, walking a few paces behind the rest of the group or, if she can help it, somewhere else completely. Alas, the Violets and Lilys of this world were never meant to be, and Lily’s weariness of Violet’s overt optimism, head-in-the-clouds capriciousness and behavioural inconsistencies forms a tonal uncomfort which Violet, try as she might with verbal reasoning, can’t compromise with.

Lily, the soap, and a later grand unveiling of a self-invented dance called The Sambola! (exclamation point included, naturally), all fail to live up to Violet’s idealistic expectations, yet Stillman makes it very clear whose side he’s on when it comes to choosing between the impassioned Violets and the dowdy Lilys. The film itself dances into many unpredictable avenues with an aloof pride as if being directly transmitted from Violet’s brain, and the brief but ebullient musical number that ends the film feels more like an optimist’s fever dream. The musical score follows suit, often evoking karaoke machine backing tracks and chintzy commercial jingles—the stuff of pipe dreams.

Violet’s misguided ideals are delivered by an amusingly understated Gerwig, who oscillates between being completely in tune with Stillman’s deadpan script and a little disconnected—however, given her character, it’s hard to tell if that’s intentional. Though the idea is that these characters aren’t yet articulate, but articulating, some line readings nevertheless hang expectantly, as if Stillman’s script segues into a blank, whilst others are delivered with a questionably elusive and flat affect.

It also wouldn’t be unfair to say that some long-running gags carry over a similar lifelessness: If, like me, you didn’t find the “playboy or operator” line in the trailer too amusing, it doesn’t get any funnier the third or fourth time around either.

And yet, you can’t help but be won over by the film’s uncanny charm, and Stillman’s old-fashioned characters, surreal quirk and manners-led approach is refreshing, especially considering the contemporary filmic landscape of college-based entertainment, as vulgar and wise-cracking as it is.

The trio of collegiate leads in Damsels in Distress are a contradictory bunch, who often babble on and on about elitism while seeming vaguely elitist, and obsess over saving souls when they themselves are in need of saving—but much like the campus plebs they bring themselves to sympathise with, Stillman makes a point to find sympathy in them, writing each character with an undergrad naiveté that pervades their half-formed philosophies and ill-conceived social structures, at the same time embracing the very optimism that naiveté affords. After all, their young lives are still in progress, and there's always room to learn. This charitable essence forms the core of Damsels in Distress, and the overall effect is one of earnest appreciation for all people, no matter how flawed, or how far they are from your social spectrum.

Reviewer: Pierre Badiola
Rated: 12A
Director: Whit Stillman
Writer: Whit Stillman
Cast: Greta Gerwig, Megalyn Echikunwoke, Carrie MacLemore, Adam Brody, Analeigh Tipton