Metropolitan
d. Whit Stillman, 1990
I was uneasy through the first couple of sequences of Whit Stillman's Metropolitan. Bear in mind, I've just seen two Rohmer films (My Night at Maud's and Claire's Knee--loved them both), and now here I am watching an American version of the same kind of 90 minute observation of privileged and articulate people. This kind of blows over once the audience discovers the main character, Tom (Edward Clements), is as much an outsider to the New York debutante lifestyle as the rest of us. Chris Eigeman plays the kind of character I would imagine Jason in Gilmore Girls to have been in his early twenties; Clements and the rest of the cast (which includes Carolyn Farina as the terribly attractive Audrey Roget) is quite superb, as is Stillman's writing and direction. Metropolitan turns out to be a charming, funny, and sad portrayal of what it means to grow up and leave friends behind, even if most of us don't live like the characters in the film.
