Capital Celluloid 2016 - Day 37: Sat Feb 6

The Last Days of Disco (Stillman, 1998): Barbican Cinema, 4pm



Here is the Barbican introduction to this 35mm screening:
This is the first event curated by this year’s Barbican Young programmers – a group of 16 – 25 year olds who meet each month. This rarely seen and witty ensemble comedy from Whit Stillman (Damsels in Distress) follows the fortunes of Charlotte and Alice, two twenty-somethings who work in publishing by day and by night, frequent the disco club scene of 1980s New York. Starring Kate Beckinsale and ChloĆ« Sevigny. We are thrilled to have director Whit Stillman come along to talk and answer your questions after the screening.

Chicago Reader review:
It's remarkable how over the course of just three “nightlife” features—Metropolitan, Barcelona, and this comedy set in the early 1980s—writer-director Whit Stillman has created a form of mannerist dialogue as recognizable as David Mamet's, a kind of self-conscious, upper-crust Manhattan gab reeking of hairsplitting cultural distinctions. Fortunately, this time around the Ivy League characters project less of a glib sense of entitlement, making them more fun to watch, and Stillman himself gives more evidence of watching rather than simply listening. The characters include two young women in publishing (Chloe Sevigny and Kate Beckinsale) who find a flat together, their roommate (Tara Subkoff), an employee at the club where they hang out (the always interesting Chris Eigeman), a fledgling ad executive (Mackenzie Astin), a junior assistant district attorney (Matt Keeslar), and a lawyer (Robert Sean Leonard). Stillman does interesting things with all of them.
Jonathan Rosenbaum


Here (and above) is the trailer.

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