The new gossip girl in Damsels in Distress
By Jenny Alvarez
Photo Cortesy.
Whit Stillman’s Damsels in Distress is a comedy about a trio of beautiful girls as they set out to revolutionize life at a grungy American university – the dynamic leader Violet Wister (Greta Gerwig), principled Rose (Megalyn Echikunwoke) and sexy Heather (Carrie MacLemore) and is open to the theaters in April 6th. They welcome transfer student Lily (Analeigh Tipton) into their group which seeks to help severely depressed students. Although is a hilarious and bizarre movie it has some break out actors Charlie (Adam Brody), dreamboat Xavier (Hugo Becker) and the mad frat pack of Frank (Ryan Metcalf) and Thor (Billy Magnussen). In some parts of the plot some actors look bored out of their minds and is a little bit disappointing that these people do not exist in real life and I really wish it. They pass the time engaged in empathetic student outreach activity which seems only to serve their own inflated sense of moral superiority. For example, the girls are seen alternating shifts at the campus Suicide Prevention Center where they expend more energies looking down their navels and policing the centre’s free donuts than, you know, preventing suicide.
It’s easy to forgive a movie its flaws when it makes the argument that trying to be an individual and unique is just a monstrous pain when the main character distinctions here are that of naïveté and conscious hypocrisy rather than the self-serving venom of Stillman’s earlier works, which suggests that his perception of modern superficiality is masked by liberal pretence and genuine ignorance. Honestly, I guess as a viewer, I would like to see another movie in which I don’t have to waste my time in fake aristocratic females but for some it reflects the innocence deserted in a teen movie like this.
