Review: Damsels in Distress (2011)

Written and directed by Whit Stillman

Damsels in Distress (2011)
Written and directed by Whit Stillman

Megalyn Echikunwoke, Carrie MacLemore, Greta Gerwig, and Lio Tipton in "Damsels in Distress"

In this campus comedy, a clique of three college girls with flower names (Violet, Heather, Rose) welcomes a new student, also named after a flower (Lily). The clique's central figure Violet (Greta Gerwig) holds the others in thrall to a weird fantasy in which they are cultural missionaries to the school's men. The men are fantastically ignorant and chuckle-headed: one poor fellow, for example, skipped kindergarten and consequently never learned the names of colors. And his character's arc throughout the film is that he studies hard and finally learns them. Similarly, the culture which Violet and her flowery sidekicks attempt to encourage isn't that of books and art; these are beyond the men of Seven Oaks College. What they want is for the men to shower. And possibly learn to perform in musicals.

This could have been funny if played in the right register, but it isn't. Whit Stillman's screenplay has the women speaking in a strangely lofty, unnatural way, like characters in a play. Quoth Violet: "I love cliches and hackneyed expressions. Do you know why? Because they're largely true. The hundreds, perhaps thousands of such cliches and hackneyed expressions that our language has bequeathed us are a stunning treasure-trove of human insight and knowledge. During these formative college years, we should try to learn as many cliched and hackneyed thoughts and expressions as possible. Furthermore, I think we will." Deep breath.

A little later Heather (Carrie MacLemore), another member of the clique, positively gaslights the new girl. Asked if she has a boyfriend, Lily (Lio Tipton) replies: "There's this grad student I met over the summer -- Xavier."

Heather: Xavier... with a Z?
Lily: No, I think it's with an X.
Heather: No, I'm certain it's a Z. 'Zavier' like 'Zorro.' It's the same sound. (Makes a Z in the air) Zorro marked his name with a Z.
Lily: It's an X.
Heather: But Zorro is with a Z.

To solve this conundrum, Violet resorts to a strategy we learn is standard for her: She makes things up, delivering her spurious explanations and maxims in the habitually lofty, faux-earnest chirp, and with a straight face: something about how there were two Zorros, and one's name started with an X.

The straight face and the other characters' more or less unquestioning acceptance of Violet's assertions are what it will take for all these characters (and actors) to get to the end of the movie, because nobody says, as any normal person would, "What the hell? Why are you talking like that? Why are you fucking with everyone?"

We're barely ten minutes into the film and wondering what Stillman's intention is. He's satirizing something, but what? Young people in the movies haven't talked like characters in a play since the 1940s, and are in no danger of starting again, so just what is the point?

A clue might lie in this film's similarity to Woody Allen films of the same time. "Damsels in Distress" uses title cards to separate scenes, and unlike any other campus comedy of the day -- the film was released in 2011 -- the soundtrack uses not indie rock band records but Gershwin and similar-sounding music from the middle of last century. By the end of the film, when the characters put on lindy-hop outfits and stage a Gershwin number on campus, it's fully into "Everyone Says I Love You" territory. Intentionally ramming the script of a Hollywood campus comedy from, say, 1940, into an early 21st century independent film, it's as if an alien from another planet who has seen only Judy Garland-Mickey Rooney movies and arrives on Earth intent on reproducing them, but has only the actresses and sets from 2011 to work with.

The plot, which like all campus comedies has to do with relationships between the boys and girls, is too complicated to pay much attention to. Along the way, Aubrey Plaza appears in a cameo, apparently the only student at the college who doesn't take Violet at face value, and her rage at Violet's bullshit is a breath of fresh air in this otherwise unfunny and patience-trying film.