Last year I was highly anticipating Whit Stillman‘s return to the big screen for the first time in, what was then, 13 years with Damsels in Distress. I ended up seeing it at the Toronto International Film Festival in September and the result ended up being a mixed bag. To cite my review, it is “easily recognizable as a Stillman feature with intelligent dialogue and characters with a gift for gab, but it takes on something of a fantastical edge I never quite became comfortable with.”
For those that are unfamiliar, please rush out and see Metropolitan and The Last Days of Disco to familiarize yourself with Stillman (you could also check out Barcelona, though that is my least favorite of his first three features). As for this film, it centers on a modern day trio of “damsels” in Violet (Greta Gerwig), Rose (Megalyn Echikunwoke) and Heather (Carrie MacLemore). Their goal while at their East Coast university is to help severely depressed and potentially suicidal students down off the ledge in their own curious way.
They aren’t exactly too bright, frequently arrogant and hard to adjust to, but I’m pretty sure they believe they mean well. Throughout the feature we get a mixture of ups, downs and even dance numbers as this trio soon meets their “distress” in the form of Charlie (Adam Brody), Xavier (Hugo Becker), Frank (Ryan Metcalf) and Thor (Billy Magnussen).
Sony Classics is set to release the film on a limited basis beginning in New York and Los Angeles on April 6 and I’m sure expansion will depend largely on how it’s received. If I had to guess, most people that want to see this outside of major metropolitan areas will have to wait for DVD and Blu-ray and if you want my opinion, it’s just as well.
Check out the just released trailer below and if you’d like to read my full review you can click here.
