I was prepared to hate this movie, even though or because I was one of the extras in it. Most of us were dazed by the mere fact that we were picked for background because we apparently looked upscale, since most of us were sporadically employed actors living in creepy lofts with too many unregistered roommates, creepier basement illegal sublets, and (in my case) an all-female SRO populated equally by out-of-town career girls and old biddies on pension, many of whom were well along the process of losing their marbles. Since I was also being stalked by a genuine upper-class twit at the time of shooting, I had little sympathy for the characters of a project that I assumed (like many other extras) was a student film helmed by a trust baby.
When the film came out, it upended all these expectations. I *knew* these characters: the outsider who doesn't know if his longing to fit in means he's selling out, the snotty guy who's actually kind of sweet, the "nice" girl who's never properly appreciated, and the cool girl who takes her power for granted. Even the way the girls try to support shy Audrey over slinky interloper Serena is true to type. They may be stereotypes, but you've met them too, regardless of your socio-economic level. The pseudo-intellectual dialogue didn't make them less sympathetic, it made them more so--they are *desperate* to impress. Well who, at that age, isn't? Some people do it with clothes or athletic achievements: these kids do it with words. As for the pony-tailed possible sociopath, he reminded me painfully of my stalker--now I knew that these jerks who think they can get away with anything don't just target little peasants like me. They endanger their own class too.
Everything that people have criticized in this film, the stilted delivery, the awkwardness, is what makes it wonderful. It captures perfectly the struggle to be accepted. You could point out that Stillman does a certain amount of this in "Barcelona" and "Disco" also, but then do we ever really outgrow the need to be accepted? Only the settings change.
