*Most critics seemed to have left Venice well in advance of the festival's closing night, when Damsels in Distress had its premiere.

Clips: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Q46nNv7THyI

They're saying: Delightful, wry, though tech-credits are bland.

Most acting praise for Sacramento's own, Greta Gerwig.

http://incontention.com/2011/09/10/venice-delicious-damsels-breaks-the-closing-night-curse/
For it gives me no small amount of pleasure to report that Stillman’s latest is an unequivocal delight — a warmly off-kilter and wholly unique campus comedy that has not only redeemed an otherwise
sluggish final few days on the Lido, but has provided the purest shot of joy in the entire festival.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/damsels-distress-venice-film-review-233723
(With this) material, some silly, some over familiar, Stillman proceeds to spin a frothy confection whose flavors are simultaneously tart and sweet. He treads a tricky comic line between exaggeration and caricature, ensuring the film’s many absurdities are generally more delightful than grating.

http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117946036/
Pic is chockfull of daft digressions and sweetly silly subplots, but the ensemble goes at it all with such deadpan rigor, it plays like vintage screwball comedy minus the pratfalls . . . Stillman's screenplay is a thing of beauty. Helmer's comic timing is likewise right on the money, but in a largely self-effacing, quietly efficient way that recalls the old-school craftsmen of Hollywood's golden age, like Howard Hawks in a breezy mood.

http://www.soundonsight.org/tiff-2011-the-skin-i-live-in-restless-damsels-in-distress/
All involved are perfectly cast and Gerwig shines, but it will come as little surprise to Stillman fans that it’s Damsels meticulously mordant dialogue that truly steals the show. Evidently, despite a 13-year hiatus, Stillman’s rapier wit and delicately skewed sensibilities remain firmly intact.

http://www.screendaily.com/reviews/the-latest/damsels-in-distress/5031917.article
As it is we get another Whit Stillman movie: droll and precious, erudite and talky, occasionally hilarious but more often annoyingly mannered in its deliberately stilted dialogue, stiff TV-soap-style camerawork and editing rhythm, and frustratingly meandering script structure.

http://exclaim.ca/Reviews/TIFF/damsels_in_distress-directed_by_whit_stillman
The dialogue is consistently hilarious, making the awkward pacing and dreadful direction somewhat palatable.