Directed by Daisy von Scherler Mayer. Written by Harry Brickmayer and Daisy von Scherler Mayer
“What do you want to be?” is a question difficult to answer on one’s most sober days, let alone when your eyes are glassed over in thrall to mind-altering substances, but it is what’s asked of NYC nightclub socialite Mary as Party Girl begins.
She’s just been arrested for hosting an illegal party, and must repay society by working as a clerk at the library her aunt manages. Her aunt’s stern and overbearing, but it’s rooted in the disappointed esteem she has for her niece. The worst combo. So here’s Mary, who lives to skip lines at clubs, serve looks, and be a social adhesive for New York’s nightlife, but must now contend with the Dewey Decimal System, key to all bookbound knowledge. A dead world for a girl who’s been too busy living.
From dancefloors to dusty bookshelves, Party Girl is a firecracker and a vibe above all else. Daisy von Scherler Mayer’s narrative flow doesn’t have the same sense of rhythm that her (incredible) thumping soundtrack does, and not all scenes enjoy the same TLC as the highlights do, but the highlights, the energy they carry, and the shining evocation of a time and place is fantasy fodder.
It’s a vibrant plunge into 90s New York party culture with its vapid excesses, petty obsessions and the very real wakeup call lurking in the dawn. People try to remember the names of hookups and fret more over wardrobe malfunctions than where rent’s going to come from. Mary, at the film’s outset, is queen of them all.
As Mary, Parkey Posey is a vision. Dressed in one of the most iconic wardrobes of any 90s movie, she wears the shit out of it, like a collage of every fashion mag cross-cut to ribbons and then made magnificently whole. Fashion alone could make Party Girl everlasting. Posey makes it something more, however, and her performance as an aloof ditz who comes good is one for the age; Mary walked so Elle Woods in Legally Blonde could run.
Posey combines withering cool girl looks with physical comedy that’s not a far throw from Buster Keaton, only wrapped in haute couture. The immediate impression of Mary as glamorously out of touch has the air let out of it with a loud raspberry sound once Posey hits the dance floor to let her limbs loose. Mary wouldn’t work if the person playing her took her all that seriously when she’s up, and didn’t have compassion for her when she’s down, but Posey does both.
Party Girl is an indelible snapshot of a time and place, yet the slice of society it lampoons doesn’t feel dated. Social media’s dumb influencer antics, vain obsessions, vapid attention spans and a devotion to feeling good, looking good all the time wouldn’t seem out of place in Mayer’s film, and while born 30 years too late, Mary’s whiplash-inducing ability to flip from insecure to iron-spine confrontational should earn her honorary Gen Z status.
A fun, heartfelt (almost) coming of age story, Party Girl is easy to enjoy and even fall in love with as it radiates life, lust for its possibilities, and entertains from start to finish with laughs, music, romance, and some earnest self-reflection, as Mary goes through the messy business of becoming.
Mikkel Frederiksen 