‘Disco’ Not What It Could Have Been

Whit Stillman makes a specific kind of movie. Each of his films boasts such a strong sense of character interplay that plot and theme seem to come almost as an afterthought.

This is not necessarily a bad thing.

His 1990 debut film, “Metropolitan,” is a comic, insider’s look at the emerging privileged types who populate the monied classes of New York City. Four years later, he used “Barcelona” to study the same types of characters as they try, with varying degrees of success, to meld into the work force.

Now, with “The Last Days of Disco,” Stillman studies the same types of characters who, while struggling in the early 1980s to find career success, experience the night life of clubs like the infamous Studio 54 (which, coincidentally, also is the subject of another forthcoming movie called, aptly, “54”).

But unlike his first two films - which at their best are explorations in acquired taste - “The Last Days of Disco” is a disappointment. It has a half-formed feel, as if Stillman tried to use his familiar cast of characters to make the sort of serious statement that he seems spectacularly unqualified to do.

Especially when that statement concerns the death of one of the more pernicious musical movements - disco - that this country ever had to endure.

Typical of Stillman’s style, the plot of “Last Days” is thin to the extreme. He follows two young manuscript readers at a Manhattan publishing house as they try to figure out how to get the promotion they need to live on their own (both receive “generous” allowances from their families).

Former classmates at Hampshire College, they once loathed each other. But now they have joined forces, however uncomfortably, to gain the support they need to achieve their ambitions.

One of those ambitions is to find suitable male companionship. The way to do that is to live the nightclub life, no small feat since entrance is limited to the flashiest, the trendiest, the most beautiful. And it is in one particular club (ostensibly modeled on Studio 54) that the movie plays out its various scenes.

Alice (Chloe Sevigny) is the more serious, and more seemingly naive, of the two protagonists. Charlotte (Kate Beckinsale) is an in-your-face beauty whose direct manner is just another way of masking her vicious inclinations toward passive-aggressive behavior.

Their conflicting personalities provide one of the tensions that fuels Stillman’s slim plotline. Other tensions involve the various males who surround them.

That would include Des (Christopher Eigeman), the acerbic nightclub manager who breaks off relationships with women by claiming to be gay; Jimmy (MacKenzie Astin), Des’ friend whose advertising job depends on his being able to get clients into the club; Josh (Matthew Keeslar), the assistant district attorney attracted to Alice whose club-going may disguise an ulterior motive; and Tom (Robert Sean Leonard), the environmental lawyer who, at least temporarily, commands Alice’s attention.

Stillman makes a mistake when he tries to capture the actual club scene, which was much more overheated than the mostly tame atmosphere he creates here. He also overlooks the rampant drug use.

But reality isn’t even the point. Nor is it the problem.

The best parts of “The Last Days of Disco,” as with all of Stillman’s movies, feature the characters just sitting around spouting their pet philosophies. Such as Josh defending the holiness of disco, or Charlotte attacking the “selfish” ‘60s generation or Alice throwing herself at Tom by claiming that she finds Scrooge McDuck “sexy.”

These characters may boast shallow minds and bankrupt values, but Stillman succeeds in making them both believable and funny. This ends up being the film’s saving grace.

For whatever his limitations, at least Stillman doesn’t treat humor as an afterthought.

“THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO” **-1/2 Location: Lincoln Heights Cinema Art Credits: Written and directed by Whit Stillman, starring Chloe Sevigny, Kate Beckinsale, Christopher Eigeman, Matthew Keeslar, MacKenzie Astin, Matthew Ross, Tara Subkoff, Robert Sean Leonard Running time: 1:53 Rating: R