Damsels in Distress - review

It’s difficult to think of a film that goes against the grain so thoroughly as this East Coast college comedy from Whit Stillman. In it, a trio of slightly posh girls set out to revolutionise the lives of boorish male students with a programme that includes good hygiene (the male dorms smell vile), musical dance numbers and a suicide clinic to help the terminally depressed.

Spearheading these improvements is Violet (Greta Gerwig), whose own lifetime goal is to start an international dance craze that will enhance “the life of everyone and every couple”. Inevitably, she and her friends (Megalyn Echikunwoke and Carrie MacLemore) soon get romantically embroiled with the very idiots they have initially complained about.

Stillman disappeared from view after three fashionable movies in the Nineties (the best of which was Metropolitan) but has returned with a novel idea and an intelligent screenplay. It will seem hopelessly old-fashioned and even fey to some and a glimpse of clear blue water to others. He doesn’t seem to direct his actors as smartly as he writes the words — there are dull patches. It’s nice, all the same, to see Stillman around again, especially since he hasn’t changed much in the interim.