I reviewed Criterion’s superb DVD release of this film earlier this year elsewhere, but I love it so that I want to touch upon it again here. A delightfully barbed comedy of manners, Whit Stillman’s witty, literate Metropolitan
is an undeniable high point of independent ‘90s cinema, one of those
movies I made a note — both mental and literal — to track down on DVD
when it finally saw release on the format. A pleasure, then, that
Criterion spearheaded the release with such a fine eye and attention to
detail, resulting in a fitting and long overdue celebration of this
1990 Oscar nominee for Best Original Screenplay.
A talky and
purposefully ostentatious vivisection of the particular ennui of
well-to-do youth, the film is set in New York City during a
Christmastime break of “not too long ago,” a hectic time that for our
young ensemble occasions all sorts of gala soirees at which they must
make appearances. With a “severe escort shortage,” scene newbie Tom
Townsend (Edward Clements) is drafted into action, joining, among
others, sharp-as-a-tack Nick Smith (Christopher Eigeman),
politico-in-training Charlie Black (Taylor Nichols), sensual Cynthia
McLean (Isabel Gillies) and the ostensible Molly Ringwald of the group
— a bit pretty, a bit dowdy — Audrey Rouget (Carolyn Farina). All sorts
of various crushes and cross-crushes exist, but the potentially jejune
is heavily counterbalanced with banter-filled talk of art, politics,
social criticism, activism and literature. Psychological perspicacity,
meanwhile, is achieved through the manner in which almost all the
characters put on small fronts over the course of the movie, and then
betray those in various, telling ways.
Stillman has described the script as “finishing started arguments that I lost,” and that truth lends Metropolitan
the weighted plausibility of to-scale conflict. The audience feels
invested in the silly problems of its subjects because Stillman
captures the particular fashion in which adolescents and
twentysomethings invest considerable psychological energy in group
mores and rules, and the highly punishable cost of breaking them. The
result is a highbrow film of, still, exceeding pleasure; you
literally bask in the all the glories and inanities of its oratorical
circle-eights, with Eigeman and Will Kempe — as the smarmy Rick Von
Sloneker, a young baron — in particular stealing the show. If the latter day films of director Wes Anderson
mean anything to you, check out their roots in Metropolitan, a gem of contemplation trumping limited means.