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`DISCO’ A HEADY LOOK AT A HIPS SCENE

Our memories of the disco era are so saturated in kitsch and embarrassment that the title “The Last Days of Disco” may suggest images of poofy hair and Village People costumes, John Travolta wannabes doing the Bus Stop and high-flying Manhattanites snorting coke through rolled-up hundred-dollar bills.

Leave it to Whit Stillman, the witty writer-director of “Metropolitan” and “Barcelona,” to explore the intellectual appeal of disco. He hasn’t neglected to depict the era’s excesses on screen, but he’s more interested in what the period looked like from ground level, particularly the perspectives of a cluster of recent college graduates.

The subculture of the privileged and educated is a Stillman speciality. His literate characters don’t just take action if they can overanalyze their motivations and their place in the world first.

They’re not angst-ridden in a whiny ’90s sort of way; they’re just earnest and overserious about themselves like people in their twenties often are. Stillman clearly is amused by these quintessential yuppies, but he never lets his humor turn scornful or unsympathetic.

The junior socialites of “Metropolitan” were trying to make sense of their friendships and love lives amid Manhattan’s debutante parties. The “Last Days” ensemble also is concerned with group dynamics, romance and dancing but this time on a broader canvas: New York’s club scene of “the very early 1980s.”

On the female side, Alice (Chloe Sevigny) and Charlotte (Kate Beckinsale) have just graduated from Hampshire College and taken entry-level jobs for a book publisher. Alice is the nice girl but a brooder — too critical and schoolteacher-like to the more superficial, not-always-loyal Charlotte, who nevertheless decides to room with her and another woman in one of Manhattan’s “railroad apartments” (there’s no hallway, so one must traverse each bedroom to reach the common areas).

The guys include four slightly older Harvard graduates who have become an advertising executive (Mackenzie Astin), a budding prosecutor (Matt Keeslar), a corporate lawyer (Robert Sean Leonard) and the second-in-command at the city’s hottest disco joint (Stillman vet Chris Eigeman) — referred to only as “the club,” though some parallels exist with Studio 54.

To these young New Yorkers, disco isn’t just a faddish outlet for escapism; it’s their generation’s own social revolution. “Before disco this country was a dancing wasteland,” declares Charlotte, who champions the free-for-all atmosphere that allows women to socialize without being dependent upon dates. “It’s a whole new era. . . . We’re in control.”

Josh, the prosecutor, recounts hopping onto the dance music bandwagon back when ’70s Philadelphia soul defined the sound. “I still consider myself a loyal adherent to the disco movement,” he confides sincerely to Tom, the lawyer, though he admits his disillusionment with the overcrowded, increasingly exclusive clubs. “What I didn’t realize was that they’d get so impossible to get into.”

Stillman dead-on captures how the status boost of being admitted into the clubs came to overshadow the sheer joys of boogeying. Although Charlotte is convinced that she and Alice look good enough to get a pass from the supercilious front-door lunk (Burr Steers), they take a cab one block to the club just to make an impressive arrival.

Meanwhile, Jimmy, the ad guy, finds that his job comes to depend upon his ability to get clients into the club. The problem is that club owner Bernie (David Thornton) has had enough of “nice” advertising types and tells Des (Eigeman) to keep them out, saying, “I don’t want that element in the club.”

Stillman touches on some of the drug-taking and dirty money dealings that dragged down the scene, but he doesn’t hype up the action to reflect the typical cinematic druggy paranoia. Instead, he low-keys his approach, keeping the focus on characters who may be more than tangential to scandal but remain just as concerned about their friendships and sex lives.

Working with his most seasoned cast, Stillman gets relaxed, comfortable performances throughout. Sevigny moves convincingly from her troubled-girl roles in “Kids” and “Trees Lounge” to the reserved Alice, and she delivers the movie’s funniest line, regarding the sexiness of Scrooge McDuck.

Beckinsale (“Cold Comfort Farm”) sports as natural an American accent as you’re going to hear from a British actress, and she manages to inject honest appeal into her flighty, manipulative Charlotte. Likewise, Eigeman has become Stillman’s pro at humanizing the obnoxious.

His characters in all three Stillman movies are somehow engaging, perhaps because they’re so upfront about their flaws: snobbery in “Metropolitan,” his habit here of dumping women by telling them he’s gay. When one woman calls him on his ploy and tells him, “You’re not fit to lick the butts of my gay friends,” you can’t really blame him for his reasoned reply: “I don’t want to lick the butts of your gay friends.”

Stillman’s sharp dialogue and wry observations suggest a less neurotic Woody Allen or less academic Tom Stoppard; retitle this one “Rosencrantz, Guildenstern and Disco Are Dead.” Yet with a carefully chosen soundtrack (Chic, Carol Douglas, Blondie, no BeeGees) and a joyous end-credits sequence, the filmmaker makes sure to remind us that disco appealed to the hips as much as the head.

Stillman has dubbed his movies his “Doomed-Bourgeois-In-Love” trilogy, and some viewers may wish this latest entry were more of a radical departure from the other two; his wry detachment doesn’t particularly prompt you to become emotionally involved. But like the insistent bass line of Chic’s “Good Times,” such modest, smart virtues can’t be ignored.

”THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO”

(star) (star) (star)

Directed and written by Whit Stillman; photographed by John Thomas; edited by Andrew Hafitz, Jay Pires; production designed by Ginger Tougas; music by Mark Suozzo; produced by Stillman. A Gramercy Pictures release; opens Friday. Running time: 1:52. MPAA rating: R. Language.

THE CAST

Alice ……………. Chloe Sevigny

Charlotte ………… Kate Beckinsale

Des ……………… Chris Eigeman

Jimmy ……………. Mackenzie Astin

Josh …………….. Matt Keeslar

Tom ……………… Robert Sean Leonard