Damsels in Distress

During a mid-semester depressive crisis, Violet takes off on a solo road trip?a development that could have been the occasion to open the movie onto a larger world. What would happen when this girl?s rigid, programmatic beliefs about proper behavior were brought into a context where they made no sense? There?s potential for both comic and dramatic gold there, and Greta Gerwig, whose sad-eyed screwball moxie makes her an ideal Stillman muse, could have mined either vein. Instead, he gives us a quick scene in a diner?one of the movie?s worst?in which Violet wows her waitresses and some fellow customers with the fresh-smelling hotel soap she says gave her the will to live. If Violet?s dark night of the soul can be resolved with a single whiff of soap, why should we continue to care about her mysterious past, or which boy she pines for, or whether her dream of starting an international dance craze will ever come true? And if the soap-cures-depression scene is meant as some kind of dark joke?if Violet is, in fact, only tap dancing around the grim truth of her own mental illness?why is the remaining half-hour of the movie not only not dark but downright pastel?

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