We all know that disco sucks. However, this is the second disco film that I have enjoyed. It is intelligent, peculiar and unique. It celebrates disco as an era, and its end.
Alice (Chloe Sevigny) is beautiful, naïve, tragically burned. There is a lovely juxtaposition of the nervous pre-coupling rituals for men and women. The tales drawing our neurotic characters together.
With disco fever at its centre, this film might be more interesting than Saturday Night Fever – but that’s just one man’s opinion.
Charlotte (Kate Beckinsale), the bitch, is funny and as lovable as the misogynist, Des (Chris Eigeman) who pretends to be gay so he can more easily shoot down girls he’s already slept with. I think he enjoys doing it this way. He’s something of a habitual liar.
An intellectual portrait of the attitudes that people had towards the end of the disco era. Painful to hear the somewhat judgemental line coming from the lovely Alice – that she doesn’t consider the guy who writes the spiderman comics to be a serious writer. And then says that Uncle Scrooge is sexy. She seems as intellectually absent as Des is ethically vacant.
Alice is consistently bitch-slapped by her friend, Charlotte. And she takes it, submits, even agrees. Charlotte’s is a point of view which will ruin Alice. Alice is a beautiful person and not confident of it.
The bouncer – God of elitism. On the dole when disco dies.
The cruel Charlotte is a perfect match for Des, who really doesn’t want to go to prison.
The idea that disco wasn’t about the bad music, it was instead about dancing and finding connections with other people. Sharing ideas. Connecting intellectually, emotionally, and sensually through dance.
When the girls dance, it’s something special. Their joy is infectious. As they play the old OCD management games, organising their romantic interests, following traditional and post-conventional rules. Testing their choices on their friends.
The guys are clueless. Everything will fall down around them as secrets and coupling drives an emotional plot with elements of intellectual speculation – philosophy and romance. A rival to Swingers.
Sevigny plays the virgin with grace and passion, hesitation and regret. Anxiety, paranoia and fearful interdependency. Alice is too agreeable – she seems to evolve by the end of the film.
A short, sharp, cynical peek into the publishing industry via the day jobs of Alice and Charlotte. They are as artificial in their work as they are in their relationships.
One moment, Charlotte is hassling Alice’s choice in men, the next she openly steals one of the choices. Ferocious pairing off is a bit of an understatement.
The elitism is attractive even as it is devious. In the midst of a criminal conspiracy, drugs and sex, happy victims and despicable characters. A portrait of horrible people seen through a different, more tolerant lens.
This is one of those stories that meanders, but in a fun underground and jazzy way. The dialogue in this film is funny and doesn’t seem to go anywhere except to speculate openly and interestingly about a number of obscure topics, perhaps simply to entertain each other enough to get laid. An artfully made film even as it is fairly trivial.
3.5 stars
the joy of eating and the folly of thinking 