The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, April 5-11
The Last Days of Disco (1998)
Directed by Whit Stillman
The third installment of Stillman’s “Doomed Bourgeois in Love” trilogy focuses on two young women: the cold, narcissist Charlotte (played by Kate Beckinsale) and her shy friend Alice (Chloë Sevigny). Set in New York during the “the very early 1980s,” the film follows Charlotte and Alice’s social and romantic entanglements, as they work low-paid jobs in a major publishing company and frequent a Studio 54-type nightclub. Like Stillman’s prior films Metropolitan and Barcelona, Last Days of Disco is a dry, wry, quick-witted ensemble comedy centered on the relationship misadventures of what in Metropolitan is referred to the “urban haute bourgeoisie.” The film packs a memorable soundtrack filled with vintage disco tracks, some clumsy dance moves, and a delightful finale involving New York subway commuters dancing spontaneously to “Love Train” by The O’Jays. Alejandro Veciana (April 8, 9, 11:30am at the Nitehawk’s Chloë Sevigny series)