Review of Party Girl, directed by Daisy von Scherler Mayer

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

For three years I worked professionally as a film critic, and while going to all of the film festivals and interviewing directors and actors was cool for a while, but I wanted to reclaim my time and watch movies I wanted to watch. Sometimes watching all of the new releases is great, and behind ahead of the curve, but I feel like I was falling so behind on movies I was genuinely excited about.

So I quit and decided to focus on this blog, and fell back more into literary criticism. I also randomly fell into a period of unemployment because of unexpected circumstances, and I took a long and hard look at my finances and realized I had enough to take time off. I did end up doing that, traveled for a bit, applied to jobs, and found myself working on the blog now more than ever.

During my time as an unemployed writer working on this blog, I was really catching up on the movies I hadn’t had the chance to see throughout the years because I had other things to do. I’m grateful I was in the financial position to do this and be able to take a break while applying to jobs, but I was on a tight budget.

That tight budget meant cutting back on my subscriptions, and I landed a deal for Criterion for three months, then cancelled it once my deal was up. I see subscriptions as a waste sometimes, so during this three months I watched all of the movies I wanted to see and so much more.

Party Girl was one of the last movies I watched during this time, and it was one I hadn’t heard of before. But it was set in New York and the synopsis interested me, so it seemed like a solid fit at the time.

Let’s get into the review!

A New York City party girl finds a new life working at the New York Public Library.

Straight off the bat, before we get into the details of this movie, I will say that because this was filmed in 1995, it was so refreshing to see a movie where people just lived their lives. I’m so sick of life with screens and technology, and am getting into this mode where I romanticize the notions of living without them.

Anyways—our main character in this movie is Mary, who is living her best life in New York City. She goes out constantly to parties, clubs, and people’s houses, and she’s literally known as the party girl in this little world of hers. Everything is about to come crashing down though when she’s caught organizing a rave by the police.

She’s arrested for this one and she convinces her godmother, Judy, to pay her bail and come rescue her from jail. But there’s a condition to this: Mary has to go work at the pubic library in an attempt to reform her ways. Judy is the manager of the branch she is going to work at, so it’s not like she can run away from her duties, too.

Mary goes to work and finds out she’s terrible at the job, but it’s in the library she starts getting really interested in what makes a library an library. She starts studying the Dewey Decimal System, and one day, when walking outside of work, she meets a Lebanese street food stand owner named Mustafa.

She keeps going to him for his falafel and other delicacies, but she’s also striking up quite the romance. Mustafa dreams of being a teacher and works hard in order to try and get his dreams manifesting into reality. On the flip side, Mary and her roommate are evicted when they are unable to pay rent, and she gets herself fired from her job when caught having sex with Mustafa in the library.

That’s probably one of the biggest mistakes anyone can make, but Mary has to keep surviving, so she gathers all of her vintage couture clothing and sells it off, haggling for a good deal whenever she can get one or knows when she’s being stiffed.

Things also get rocky with Mustafa. One night, after a particularly bad fight between the two, she takes some drugs to try and forget about what just happened, but then wakes up the next morning and realizes she needs to commit to getting a library science degree. She asks Judy to come over to chat with her, but then her friends throw her a surprise birthday party with a male stripper at the same time.

Judy is not impressed with what she’s seeing, but Mary convinces her that she is going to take being a librarian seriously. Judy does end up giving in and believing her, and her roommate and Mustafa even chip in to show how she’s changed their lives since she became a clerk at the library.

After that, Judy gives Mary her job back, then fully commits to the party and joins in on the fun.

Overall Thoughts

I had never heard of this movie until I found it on the Criterion website, but I’m so glad I stumbled on it through the curated collection on New York City at the time. I love a good movie set in New York, it’s my guilty pleasure, and I could really see so many girls like Mary when I went to college in NYC too.

All of this is to say that I felt like this movie was realistic on so many levels, but it was also a classic New York story. Girl has her fun, realizes she needs to hustle and shape up in order to survive (and also be a better person), then finds her calling. I feel like I had a similar path in the city, minus all of the partying. I had fun in different ways.

I liked this one a lot, so if you’re interested in the plot and haven’t seen it already, go give it a chance! Movies are meant to be seen, not read about.

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