Synopsis

In early-1980s Manhattan, recent college graduates Alice and Charlotte spend their days working at a publishing house and their nights pursuing romance, status, and escape at an exclusive disco club. As friendships shift and relationships grow complicated, the club's closing signals the end of more than a nightlife trend: it marks the fading of a social world built around glamour, music, and constant reinvention.

Factoids & Trivia

• The film draws loosely on writer Whit Stillman's experiences in Manhattan clubs, including Studio 54, but he emphasized that it is a fictional story assembled from different real-life elements rather than a direct memoir.

• Castle Rock announced the project before Stillman had finished writing the screenplay. The production was then pushed to move quickly because another disco-era film, 54, was also in development.

• The main club interiors were filmed inside the Loew's Jersey Theatre, a lavish 1920s movie palace. The production transformed the former cinema into a nightclub and shared the location with the production of Illuminata.

• Stillman extended the shoot to 50 days, considerably longer than his usual schedule. Many of the extras playing club staff were professional waiters, which led to the filmmaker receiving free meals and desserts in New York for years afterward.

• The subway dance finale was filmed in a disused station connected to a transportation museum. The location allowed the crew to control a train entering and leaving the station.

• The closing dance deliberately breaks from the film's realism. The background performers were largely New York actors who were not presented as conventionally young or glamorous, reinforcing the film's idea that disco's appeal could extend beyond its fashionable inner circle.

• The film became part of the informal trilogy formed by Metropolitan, Barcelona, and The Last Days of Disco. Criterion later released the three films together as a Whit Stillman trilogy.

• A novelization, also titled The Last Days of Disco, with Cocktails at Petrossian Afterwards, followed in 2000. Criterion's home-video edition includes an audio recording of Stillman reading from it.