We’re all back from Prime or Netflix or sailing the high seas or what have you with our unwrapped movie gifts, right? It’s that most holy of days, The Day Between My Mom’s Birthday And Epiphany, and it’s time for our twice-annual tradition. Kind of curious now how my mom would deal with all this, now I stop to think about it. She’s semi-adventurous in the matter of movies, and if you could cater to the tastes of an eighty-year-old woman, she’d probably enjoy it.
Anyway, on to more pertinent matters—my movie! I was gifted Damsels in Distress by our own Narrator, and I’m glad I didn’t realize it was Whit Stilman, a filmmaker I don’t usually like. I never would have sought this movie out on my own.
I am forty-seven years old and still have something of a grunge aesthetic. Oh, this is partly for financial reasons, and left to my own devices, I throw in Rockabilly, Steampunk, and Ren faire aspects to my wardrobe. Not that two of those would endear me any more to the characters of this movie. I also went to a college that is basically unrecognizable if your only view of college is the one you get from American movies despite being an American public college. We also did not have a Greek system, but we did not replace it with our own not-Greek system and instead just got along happily without one.
Lily (Lio Tipton) has just transferred to Seven Oaks (weirdly, also the name of a school where my daughter attended preschool). She is immediately snapped up by Violet (Greta Gerwig) as a worthy addition to her group, which also includes Rose (Megalyn Echikunwoke) and Heather (Carrie MacLemore). They are determined to bring class and dignity to Seven Oaks, allegedly the last college in its group of schools to go co-ed and therefore the one most dominated by Young Adult Guy energy. There’s an entire dorm that never seems to shower. Violet has the group running the campus suicide prevention center, because she feels very strongly that they must give back to their community.
Man, Gerwig is good in this. I think I’ve now seen twice as many movies she’s directed as that she’s acted in—yes, I plan to remedy this, but there are a lot of movies she’s in that I’m reasonably sure I wouldn’t like. But there is never a moment in the movie when you aren’t aware that there’s something off about Violet, yet you are equally aware that Violet doesn’t know how much is wrong with her. Loath as I am to diagnose fictional characters, the childhood behaviours Rose describes sound very much like OCD, and there’s more to her than that, though it’s hard to say quite what. Violet doesn’t see the world the same way other people do, and it’s more than just the appeal of doufi. (A non-standard but preferred spelling.) The whole cast is good, but Gerwig as Violet is the best.
The idea that tap dancing would be an effective treatment for depression is no worse or weirder than a lot of other ideas I’ve heard over the years. I’ve been told to try yoga, daily walks, of course pot, St. John’s wort, homeopathy, “just concentrating,” and probably a lot of others that I’m forgetting. Tap dancing does have that “physical activity” draw that people think is a magic wand, but I do like the observation that the movie makes that therapy and medication are a better treatment, even if Violet immediately rejects the very concept. Nope, she’s weirdly fixated on dance even though, you know, she doesn’t know as much about it as she thinks she does. Fun fact—I was once at an airport to pick up a friend and saw a limo driver holding a sign saying, “Chubby Checker.” “Huh!” I said. “I didn’t realize he was still alive!” “Neither did I,” said the limo driver.
Poor Jimbo (Jermaine Crawford) is about the only character in the movie I have any respect for, and he deserved better than to be at this college. Rose seemed too mannered by half even before her big reveal at the end. Heather is not a bright woman—and deserves better than Thor (Billy Magnussen), who managed to never learn his colours. Fred (Adam Brody) is a con artist, and he’s better than Xavier (Hugo Becker), who claims to be a Cathar, causing me to read a fair amount of the Wikipedia page on the subject. It’s certainly an unusual line he feeds Lily, at any rate. And don’t even get me started on Frank (Ryan Metcalf).
What about everyone else? What did all of you think of your gifts?