Damsels in Distress is Whit Stillman?s first film in 14 years: For those keeping track at home, that?s the equivalent of three four-year stints at an Ivy League college, plus one year of graduate school, plus one year of aimless backpacking around Europe bankrolled by daddy. How much you enjoy Damsels will depend on your tolerance for Stillman?s particular brand of duct-taped Sperry Topsider whimsy. It?s a comedy! It?s a musical! It?s a trip down memory lane to revisit the blissful confusion of our — or someone?s — college years! Damsels in Distress is all of those things and yet somehow less, as wayward as a second-semester junior who can?t yet decide on a major.
The characters and the movie itself seem lost in time, which is surely part of the point. Greta Gerwig plays Violet, the leader of a snobby three-girl clique at an eminently respectable East Coast college — it goes by the name Seven Oaks, and the campus is a cozy nest of Greek Revival buildings enhanced by a great deal of exquisite, sun-dappled leafiness, the kind of place that inspires nostalgia long before graduation. (The picture was filmed in Snug Harbor, on Staten Island, a clever use of location shooting.) On the first day of the new semester, Violet and her cohorts — the judgmental, upper-crusty Rose (Megalyn Echikunwoke) and the flaky-cute Heather (Carrie MacLemore) — spot a new girl and immediately decide to take her under their wing: Lily (Analeigh Tipton) has just transferred from another school, and though she doesn?t seem particularly lost, she does have a wide-eyed Olive Oyl innocence that inspires protectiveness. And if you?re Violet, you?ll add a soup�on of passive-aggressive condescension. ?Lily failed, or was unhappy, at her last school, but we feel she?s going to adapt beautifully,?…
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