Coming this year: Whit Stillman's Damsels in Distress

[Chris Knipp]

http://img705.imageshack.us/img705/8633/damselsindistressslice.jpg
Early-release still from Damsels in Distress

DAMSELS IN DISTRESS.
Little since Gary Winnick's Tadpole (http://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=78&view=next) and Burr Steers's Igby Goes Down (http://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=49), both from 2002, has anything quite come close to equaling the wit of Whit Stilolman, whose Metropolitan, Barcelona, and Last Days of Disco (1990, 1994, 1998) were some of the brightest American movies of the Nineties. Now finally after a thirteen-year absence from the big screen Stillman has a new feature to be released this year. It is called Damsels in Distress. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1667307/) It features Greta Gerwig and Adam Brody. A Whit Stillman website (http://www.whitstillman.org/2011/03/30/sony/) gives further information about the movie, which is to be released by Sony Classics.

KICKING AND SCREAMING.
Note: I just caught up on Noah Baumbach's quite Stillman-esque debut feature, Kicking and Screaming (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113537/)(1995), whose gifted cast includes Parker Posey, Elliot Gould, Stillman mouthpiece Chris Eigeman and other charmers I didn't know about such as Josh Hamilton (in the lead role as Bonner, Eliot Gould's son) and Olivia d'Abo. Eric Stolz appears as the cool unambitious bartender, and this was about the same time he played the drug dealer in Pulp Fiction. I've just come across Jonathan Rosenbaum's essay (http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.com/?p=18422)on Kicking and Screaming (a movie he had warmly if briefly endorsed in the Chicago Reader on its release) for the Criterion Collection reissue. If you have Netflix you can Instant Play this film off their website.

[Johann]

Thanks for the heads-up.
I haven't seen a Whit Stillman film. I take it you recommend his three 90's features?
And I didn't know Kicking and Screaming was a Criterion DVD now.
I thought you were neutral about Jonathan Rosenbaum?

[Chris Knipp]

I am neutral about Jonathan Rosenbaum, that's why I refer to his essay. Sometimes he's great, and sometimes he's a pain in the butt. When he's talking favorably about something I like, I listen. When we're looking for knowledgeable discussions of Noah Baumbach's first film, there may not be that much of a choice. JR says here:


Baumbach is also often cross-referenced with Whit Stillman, who has used the versatile and resourceful Chris Eigeman in all three of his own features, Metropolitan (1990), Barcelona (1994), and The Last Days of Disco (1998) — and Wes Anderson (who has enlisted Baumbach as a co-writer again on his latest project, Fantastic Mr. Fox). But if Stillman’s own witty way with dialogue and youthful behavior and his keen sense of locale periodically suggest Eric Rohmer, and Anderson at his best (as in 1998’s Rushmore) has the high-style populist wit of an Ernst Lubitsch, I think Baumbach’s most relevant influence is someone looser and more experimental than either of these: Jean Renoir. His Renoir-like taste for long takes, where he sometimes lets his camera roam while following his actors from a distance, is already strikingly evident in the very first shot of Kicking and Screaming. Even more to the point, his best gifts as a director are related to a capacity to coax unexpected and wonderful things from his actors I would definittely recommend Stillmman's three 90's features. Metropolitan etc. might be more like the real Jane Austen than the Jane Austen movies. The wit, the rationality, the good conversation. He's way wittier than Eric Rohmer, not that I don't love Rohmer. It's interesting to think of Kicking and Screaming as a post-college American slacker version of Jean Renoir. There may be some truth, or some insight in that. Anyway, Rosenbaum gives you the background and references to play around with.

[Johann]

"post-college American slacker version of Jean Renoir"---hmm, gotta get my head around that!
Is the Renoir similarities strictly the long takes? or is there more?
Has Noah Baumbach stated that he's influenced by Renoir or was that just a critic drawing comparisons?
It would be very cool if he was trying to Honor that Master. I would've never known.
Thanks for the info & quotes.

[Chris Knipp]

It's easy, Johann, just Google "Noah Baumbach" + "Jean Renoir" if you need proof of a personal connection.
Often described as witty, insightful and unapologetically New York, it was no surprise that writer-director Noah Baumbach drew comparisons to Woody Allen and Whit Stillman - compliments the filmmaker has relished throughout his career. A childhood spent in art house theaters, soaking in Howard Hawks, François Truffaut and Jean Renoir, helped inform his lifelong ambition to become a filmmaker.… See Full Noah Baumbach Biography -- Yahoo movies. (http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/contributor/1800023533)

[Johann]

I don't need proof so bad that I have to google it.
I was just wondering if Baumbach was coming from a place of serious tribute to Renoir or if a critic just saw Renoir's style in Baumbach's work.
If he haunted art house theatres as a kid, THEN CASE CLOSED.
:)

[Chris Knipp]

Or course he did.