Metropolitan

This film is a brilliant talkfest, with the decline of the New York WASP social setting a major point. It's set on a couple weeks during the Christmas season, with Tom Townsend being invited to a party, much by chance, by Nick and his friends. He doesn't "belong", but everyone likes him, some more than others. He does seem rather odd, with his socialist ideas, and his anti-party attitude. What develops is an odd relationship between Tom and Nick, as well as between Tom and a girl named Audrey.

Christopher Eigmann, as Nick, is a stand out in this cast. He is cynical, pessimistic, yet probably the smartest one in the group. He spouts of dialogue with conviction and care.

What makes this film work is the slight sadness we feel at the disintegration of this class, without having ever been part of it.

Some people will find it boring. It doesn't have the prerequisite number of explosions for the action fans, and not much does happen. But the way this film is executed, where dialogue is the key, makes this film one of the ten best of 1990.

This movie is very close to my heart. Every time I watch it, I lose touch with any bitterness and cynicism that may reside within me. It turns me into a complete sap. I just love every character. I love the scene with Tom and Charlie in the bar talking with the older version of themselves. I love when they find the panties on the lawn of Rick Von Sloneker's beach house. Although this and Stillman's other films are often described as 'Woody Allen-lite', I think they have more heart than Allen's films.

I read somewhere that Whit Stillman said he was going to stop making films about these sort of people after 'The Last Days Of Disco'. I pray it isn't so. Then again, a Whit Stillman action film is something I would definitely pay money to see.

Centering on the lives of wealthy, well-educated young women "coming out" as debutantes and on the equally wealthy, well-educated young men who attend deb parties as the girls' escorts, Whit Stillman's feature directing debut sparkles with incredible dialogue that always wavers between savage wit and heartfelt poignancy. Few who have seen the picture will forget its hilarious dissections of New York social classes, its elegant sense of vocabulary, or its caustic self-awareness. The thing I enjoy the most about Metropolitan (and the two subsequent films Stillman has made), however, is the verisimilitude with which the characters are rendered. I grew up far from the money and privilege of Metropolitan's inhabitants, but I could so easily relate to their fears, desires, and insecurities -- because Stillman never forgets to keep these kids human.

What a very different way to look at people...or, what a different group of characters to focus a movie on would be putting it better. Stillman took the snobby 'debutants' of upper Manhattan and made a movie about what they talk about. I personally found 2 kinds of humor in this movie...I laughed with the characters, and laughed at them. Can a group be this funny and be serious? It was very intelligent the way this movie had me listening, listening, laughing...quick cut to another scene and start over again. I have to admit that the acting was something of a humor in itself, as was the frayed ending, but all in all a very enjoyable movie.

I wish I could say more about it, but for some reason watching this, 'Barcelona', and 'Last Days of Disco' has left me a little wordless...I wouldn't be surprised to find that every word in the Webster's Dictionary was used between the three. But kudos to Stillman for doing it right.

Whit Stillman managed to make a talky movie about a bunch of pampered, privileged, opinionated college students running around in the most elite New York society, and not make me hate all of them.

That really is a testament to the tone Stillman is able to strike, because I should have found these people to be intolerable. Instead, I found them weirdly endearing, even the cockiest of them, because they seem so fragile and vulnerable underneath their rich swankiness. These are a bunch of kids who have been so isolated from the real world that all they know how to do is act like their parents, which means they're all 20 going on 50. Seriously, they wear suits and dresses all the time and go to cocktail parties where they dance the fox trot. And the movie's saving grace is that they all seem to know to one degree or another that they're not entirely ready for the big world out there, and they cling to their social group because they're scared of the alternative. This makes them very human. After all, aren't we all, no matter our specific circumstances, just trying to do the best we can with what we're given?

"Metropolitan" brought Stillman a Best Original Screenplay Oscar nomination in 1990.

Grade: B+