Consider our indie film loving hearts now exploding as Greta Gerwig, the mumblecore actress who has crossed over to more mainstream fare like Noah Baumbach’s “Greenberg” earlier this year and upcoming Russell Brand comedy “Arthur,” has revealed to WWD (via Hollywood Elsewhere) that she is set to star in Whit Stillman’s “Damsels In Distress.”
Earlier this summer, the project came to light and was announced to be a low-budget affair that would have “no stars and while Gerwig certainly isn’t a household name, she’s not an entirely unknown element either. That said, at the time of publication of the interview in mid-September, Gerwig said she would be starting work on the film “in two weeks” so would imagine the project is set to begin any day now, if it hasn’t already.
This is definitely exciting stuff as it’s been twelve long years since Stillman’s “Last Days Of Disco,” and he’s unfortunately seen a handful of projects not quite come together over the past years. In the film, Gerwig says she’ll play, “Violet who runs a suicide-prevention center at a liberal arts college. She prevents suicides through the powers of Thirties song-and-dance numbers. So it’s a very dark comedy.” So, does this mean musical numbers are in the film? Guess we’ll have to wait and see. You can read the full synopsis revealed earlier this year after the jump:
[The picture] centers on a group of college girls who take in a new student and teach her their own misguided ways of helping people. Lily, a new student at Seven Oaks University, winds up filling in with a dynamic and highly individualistic group of girls, addicted to the elegance of the past: Heather, Violet and Rose all volunteer at the campus Suicide Prevention Center, convinced that musical dance, sharp clothes and good hygiene — the Dior perfume “Diorissimo” is their trademark — can all contribute to staving off the inevitable self-destructive impulses that follow hard on the heels of failed college romances. Despite their sophisticated talk and savvy use of perfume, the girls are plagued by Cupid’s arrows and must adjust their psyches to the onset of amour.
No word yet on other cast members, but the project appears to be completely under the radar (IMDB doesn’t know it exists yet). Needless to say, we’re very exited that Stillman is back; he’s definitely a director long, long overdue for a new film and we hope his comeback is strong.
