One of the Chicago Boyz, the one who goes by the name "onparkstreet", recently posted a question that I had pretty much given up asking myself at all regularly: Where Have You Been Whit Stillman?

He links to this, where we encounter the news that, wherever Whit Stillman may have been for the last decade (while apparently failing to finish other movies) he is now back in business, with a new, completed and ready-to-view movie called Damsels in Distress. I'm about a month behind the news on this, but frankly, I don't pay much attention to the latest movies any more, so I'm not that surprised that it took me this long to learn of Stillman's return.

A movie which apparently stars four girls doesn't much appeal to me. I tend to prefer chick flicks to implausibly violent costume dramas set either in a violent past or a violent future, but I like my chick flicks not to be too chicky, so to speak. I like men to join in and do occasional manly things, like hit one another and lie and be unaware of people's feelings, in among all the chick chat. In Metropolitan, Stillman's first movie and my favourite of his, blows and loud insults are exchanged, in among all that witty dialogue with its deftly constructed sentences which begin, continue and then end, just as if someone had written them out beforehand. In Barcelona someone has his eye shot out.

But how much damage are four damsels going to do to anyone? How often will they give me a rest from girls being receptive to each others' feelings, and get the plot motoring properly by injecting relieving doses of insensitivity and uncaringness?

I will definitely make a point of seeing this latest Stillman movie, and judging by what is said in postings like this, I may quite enjoy it, and maybe enjoy it a lot. Nevertheless, I will be hoping for it to be more enjoyable than I will be fearing it to be.