‘Damsels’ is a charming little oddity

Clever comedy set at college unlike any in real world.

It’s delightful and a little bewildering to find a 2012 comedy that evokes a world that exists only in the novels of P.G. Wodehouse.

Whit Stillman’s “Damsels in Distress” creates Seven Oaks College, a school so innocent and naive that only it could believe in itself. Its heroine, Violet Wister, is one of the daffiest characters in recent movies, who believes one of the noble callings of women is to date men who are their inferiors and thus lift them up.

All the men at Seven Oaks are Violet’s inferiors. Violet (Greta Gerwig) is one of those tall, blond, efficient style-setters who sweep down the hallways of school comedies, scattering instruction and snobbery.

“Damsels in Distress” is the fourth film (and the first since 1998) by Whit Stillman, who as a younger man looked like F. Scott Fitzgerald and spoke like someone who had learned the language out of sophisticated comic novels. He made a kind of movie nobody else was making, about rich and privileged young people moving in the very best circles — their own.

Now he centers on a fictional college that’s like an Ivy League school for those who are not very rich or smart.

Violet, of course, must have a posse, friends who are not quite as tall or (in her mind) as pretty. They flank her because Violet must always be centered. On the first day of the new school year, we meet them: Rose (Megalyn Echikunwoke) and Heather (Carrie Maclemore), who both instinctively stand a step behind her. Violet has ESP when it comes to picking out new recruits, and she and her friends sweep down upon Lily (Analeigh Tipton), a campus newcomer.

Stillman writes his own dialogue, and is a master of double-reverse wit. He’s lucky to have found an actress in Gerwig who finds the perfect note for playing a woman who knows everything better than you do, but doesn’t believe she’s being stuck up about it; she’s just being kind.

The movie almost inevitably contains a campus musical, centering on Violet’s new dance craze, the Sambola. This is not an inspired dance craze, nor is the musical destined for Broadway, but led by Violet they are all perfectly rehearsed and keep on smiling, and their good nature is impossible to resist. “Damsels in Distress” Grade: B Starring Greta Gerwig, Megalyn Echikunwoke, Carrie Maclemore, Analeigh Tipton and Adam Brody. Directed by Whit Stillman. Rated PG-13 for mature thematic content including some sexual material. At Lefont Sandy Springs and Regal Tara. 1 hour, 37 minutes. Bottom line: Witty dialogue zings in campus comedy.