Review of Damsels in Distress (2012) by Daniel P — 21 Dec 2013

Imagine if Heathers went academic had a bit of heart and was set in a university instead of a high school- that's kind of what "Damsels In Distress" is, but it's so much more than that. As in "Last Days of Disco", Whit Stillman gives us a talky, philosophical film about humanity with added satire and bags of humour transmitted through oodles of witty dialogue. Besides that, it has an absolutely undeniable charm and works thoroughly well. Greta Gerwig is the stand-out performance here. Her turn as a neurotic, arrogant, pseudo-intellectual is an absolutely spot-on satire of your typical overly-confident student type.

Besides all this, it works as a great satire of the university (college, in the American terms this movie is set in) experience- the over-seriousness, the overly-analytical day-to-day existence of what is essentially a soap opera with learning attached. The real genius here though was the filtration through the classic old-Hollywood romantic stylisation. There are few films I've watched and had a smile on my face throughout, but this was one of them.