A Catholic Review Of "Damsels In Distress"

Best review yet! A bit of an odd review, but that’s Catholicism for you!:

Whit Stillman’s new film, Damsels in Distress, offers one of the most positive film endings in recent memory. What most reviewers of the film have neglected to mention is how the film makes a subtle suggestion about authentic Catholicism as a positive, counter-cultural option in the face of dominant cultural trends.

...At first, Violet’s charming naivety seems to be played for laughs, as if she is simply a comic character with an amusing form of mental illness. But by the time the movie ends, the audience is challenged to ask themselves: Isn’t Violet’s crazy dream-world in fact preferable? Is hers not the most beautiful way of choosing to transfigure the real world? Isn’t it really the dominant culture—concretely symbolized by the movie’s decadent “Cathar” heretic, Xavier (Hugo Becker)—that is truly crazy?

...Violet is introduced to us as the zany leader of a trio of girls on the fictional Seven Oaks campus who welcome a newcomer, Lily (Analeigh Tipton). Lily functions as Violet’s foil, something especially highlighted when Lily is later on seduced by the “Cathar” Xavier. But prior to that, the girls enlist Lily as part of their efforts to improve the campus with a program of beautiful clothes, perfumed soap, and tap-dancing as suicide-prevention therapy.

The distress from which these damsels need to be rescued is nothing less than the rampant boorishness of contemporary culture. But because the frat-boy mentality of the campus militates against any chivalric rescue, the damsels take matters into their own hands and instead pursue Violet’s nostalgic dream of a better world.

...It’s the movie’s suicide-prevention theme that got me thinking the most. It seems to me that the real theme of the film is the suicide of the West, with Violet operating as Whit Stillman’s proxy for offering a “suicide-prevention” program for the West.

...VIOLET: You probably think we’re frivolous, empty-headed, perfume-obsessed college coeds. You’re probably right. I often feel empty-headed… But we’re also trying to make a difference in people’s lives. And one way to do that is to prevent them from killing themselves... Have you ever heard the expression, “Prevention is nine-tenths the cure?” Well, in the case of suicide, it’s actually ten-tenths.

The grand dance finale of the film is preceded by the epiphany of the frat boy Thor (Billy Magnussen), wherein he is able to distinguish the colors of the rainbow for the first time. Earlier, Thor had been played for laughs as someone who had never learned how to identify primary colors. But it is his parents whom the film blames for his mis-education. And Stillman also has Thor make an eloquent appeal:

THOR: I don’t know about you but I don’t think anyone should feel embarrassed about not knowing stuff. What’s embarrassing is pretending to know what you don’t—or putting down other people just because you think they don’t know as much as you. I’m happy to admit I’m completely ignorant. That’s why I’m here and plan to really hit the books. The next time you see me, I’ll know more than I do now. I’ll be older, but also wiser—or at least know more stuff. For me, that’s education.

...Do we want to affirm Violet and her “international dance craze” or not? And what would that “international craze” be, other than the opposite of the Modernist heresy of decadent and barren boorishness that in this film goes by the name of “Catharism”? Would it not be the cultural fecundity of Violet’s own “Catholicism”?