"Damsels in Distress" Screening and After-Party Erin Baiano for The New York Times Cast members, above from left, Megalyn Echikunwoke, Greta Gerwig, Adam Brody, Carrie MacLemore, Analeigh Tipton and Billy Magnussen. IMAGINE a college campus where students don't stare at their smartphones. Tweets are what birds do. Vulgarity is considered blasphemous. And the cures for depression aren't pills or therapy but old-fashioned bars of soap and tap-dancing. That's the terribly pleasant and almost painfully articulate world of "Damsels in Distress," the loopy new romantic comedy of manners and other things by Whit Stillman. A Monday-night screening at the Tribeca Grand felt as much like a boarding school graduation as a play for publicity by the Cinema Society, the evening's host. But then, when the creator of a film credits his godfather, an Ivy League professor, for coining the term WASP, what else to expect? Even the corporate sponsors were old-school: Town & Country magazine and Brooks Brothers. And the very young and adorable cast seemed to be on their very best behavior as they arrived, walking stiffly as if in charm school or the Easter Parade. "I always think carefully about what I'm wearing when I'm going to see Whit," said Greta Gerwig, the leading lady, in a billowy orange Prada cocktail dress that was very Greenwich circa 1961. And I try to keep my topics elevated, too. Adam Brody felt the same way, and looked it in a blue blazer, somber tie, gray flannel trousers and pocket square. "The world of the movie is very proper, and there's more etiquette in it," he said. Our culture could certainly benefit from more of that. Dream on, young man, and cut to the party after the screening, please. That took place a few blocks away at the SoHo Grand Hotel, in a suitably imposing lounge with leather wing chairs, Oriental carpets and a clock on the mantel where a fireplace glowed. All traces of the movie's heightened language and propriety began to vanish as the drinks went down. Amy Sacco, the nightclub doyenne, walked around in stocking feet and even went outside shoeless for a cigarette. Craig Lawrence, a modeling agent, leered at a young woman's physique and asked her where she worked out. Billy Magnussen flogged the gray suit that Brooks Brothers dressed him in for the evening in ways that would make a headmaster cringe. "They hooked me up," he shouted as he shimmied like a Chippendale dancer. It fits great around the armpits and crotch. Euan Rellie, the good-natured man-about-town (and graduate of Cambridge University), looked dapper in a chalk-striped suit. He sounded it, too. "Nobody cares about elegance anymore, and it's a shame," he said. Then he looked at Ghislane Maxwell (the daughter of Robert Maxwell, the British press baron) in a tight knit top, and told her she had the best breasts in New York. Even Mr. Stillman, looking every inch the Harvard man in navy suit with pocket square and cocktail in hand, had loosened his tie after a long night of polite conversation. "But what is being polite really about?" he mused. Being scared. Rest in peace, Emily Post.