Back in the 90s director Whit Stillman made three movies about rich, young intellectuals overanalyzing their relationships and acting way more neurotic than they should be able to get away with due to their privilege. People really liked them, and they’ve gone on to be influences for many of the top indie directors working today. Stillman himself hasn’t made another film since 1998’s The Last Days of Disco, so getting a new movie from him in 2012 is a pretty big deal in some circles. For me, personally, I didn’t really connect with his earlier work. It seemed to me to be too smug and self-important, and I didn’t get the sense of self-awareness I was looking for as far as the protagonists go. They were petty and shallow, but earnestly so, committedly so. Damsels in Distress is different. It’s far more whimsical than anything else Stillman has done, and it always seems like we’re supposed to be chuckling along with the characters as they act self-absorbed, not taking them at face value.
The world of Damsels in Distress looks pretty much like our own, just a little sunnier and more colorful, so I went into it expecting to watch a typical movie about young people in college. And by typical, I guess I mean a movie about characters who could really exist, talking how real people actually talk. What I got was something else. The characters in Damsels in Distress are like nothing else you’ve ever come across. The girls who serve as our protagonists have taken it upon themselves to make the other students attending their university into social projects. There’s a lot of suicide that goes on around the campus, and our heroes feel like it has much to do with poor hygiene and unpleasant odors. To combat this they’ve set up a suicide prevention center, complete with coffee and donuts, that takes at risk students and treats their conditions with the practicing and performance of tap dance routines. There’s also a bit about distributing a particularly nice smelling kind of soap to the freshman dorm, and some hypothesizing that it’s better to date idiot frat boys rather than smart and attractive guys, because it serves the better social good. Boys in this world seem to exist either as player, operator types or as over excitable, painfully dim puppy dogs; and the girls are all named after flowers. Sure, this little rundown probably doesn’t do the complexities or the uniqueness of Stillman’s world justice, but I guess my point is that Damsels in Distress is a little whimsical, it has a dusting of the fantastical, and it takes a while to grow accustomed to its rhythms and logic.
Often in criticisms of films like this writers call the characters “quirky,” and they mean it as a term of derision. Sometimes, when the characters are too weird to be relatable, that criticism is valid... but I find that more often than not they’re just speaking to a difference in taste rather than real fault in the film. I would definitely call the characters in this film “quirky,” but I use it as a term of endearment. The dialogue in this film is consistently hilarious. It’s full of random asides and absurdist logic, and it takes a bit of concentration to keep up with; which you need to do so that you can catch all of the gags. The girls’ thoughts and opinions are often absurdist as well. But after you get to know them, you begin to realize that each character has her own logic system, and nothing is being done just for the sake of weirdness. Despite the fact that they initially appear more like aliens than human beings, I found that I started liking all of the girls so much that once some love triangle stuff starts popping up toward the end of the film, I was fully invested in its outcome. Damsels in Distress is a layered experience, and it’s lots of fun to dig into.
Probably the biggest reason why these unique beings end up working so well as movie characters, aside from the writing, is that Stillman has found a great group of actresses to bring them to life. Carrie MacLemore plays Heather, the dumb one, and she manages to keep that archetype from appearing tired or cartoonish by adding a sweetness and an earnestness to everything she does. Megalyn Echikunwoke plays Rose, who is a one note joke, but who milks a self-aware winking at how one note she is to create a running gag that works throughout the whole of the film. Analeigh Tipton, who I first saw in Crazy, Stupid, Love, impressed me there, and continued to impress me here as Lily, the new girl who serves as our eyes into this world. She’s great at showing vulnerability and making you empathetic toward her, so she probably has a big future in front of her as the lead of romantic comedies.
But the real star of the show is the character of Violet. She’s like the girl version of Max Fischer. She’s the leader of the group, and most of the big events of the film that get put into motion come from her brain; they’re crafted by her unique form of neurosis that seems to think, maybe rightly, that all of life’s flaws can be fixed through aesthetic changes and the creation of dance numbers. She’s played by Greta Gerwig, and if I thought that I went into this movie already loving her as an actress, then I can’t even explain how I feel about her now. In some ways it feels like this entire movie was designed as a vehicle to show off Gerwig’s charms, and to get you to fall in love with her as a performer. She kills it with the deadpan dialogue, she makes you feverishly root for her character—even when you don’t quite understand her logic or thinking—and she just generally steals the movie out from under everyone else. You start the film thinking that what you’re watching is going to be mostly about Lily, but by the end of it you’ve been sucked into the orbit of Violet, who has a natural gravity that makes her a visionary and a leader. And really, isn’t that a big part of what we go to the movies for? To meet larger than life characters more interesting than the ones we come across in real life?
Damsels in Distress is kittens and rainbows; it’s like a great big hug. With its female protagonists, who practically play as princesses, and its several almost musical numbers (that are fun rather than cheesy or off-putting), it almost feels like you’re watching a Disney movie. Usually I don’t go for this sort of cutesy stuff, but due to its wit and infectious energy, Damsels in Distress had me hooked all the way through. How could you not like a movie that has a frat boy character named Thor who never learned his colors? I didn’t know what to expect when I walked into this one, but I walked out feeling like it was the most fun I’ve had at the movies in a while. Hell, I walked out of it smiling my stupid head off.
