Metropolitan

Another of the movies that I recorded during one of the free preview weekends is Whit Stillman's directorial debut Metropolitan. If you've got the Showtime (I think) package, you'll be able to catch it on Flix tomorrow morning at 10:15 AM and again on Saturday.

Tom Townsend (Edward Clements in a cast of unknowns) is walking one winter's night in Manhattan when a taxi comes up to him and the passengers in it offer to share their taxi with him. It turns out they're all going to the same party that's part of New York's Debutante Ball season. Tom says he's fine walking; in fact, he never takes taxis, preferring to walk or use public transport.

Once we get to the party, we find that Tom styles himself a socialist, spouting the sort of nonsense that most recent college graduates do; indeed, think back to when you were that age and thought you had such profound ideas but, looking back on them decades later, realize most of it was silly at best and embarrassing at worst. He's also not quite in the same league as the rest of the people at the party. They're a group of well-to-do bright young things (as they might have been called in an earlier decade) on Manhattan's Upper West Side, led more or less by the charismatic Nick Smith (Chris Eigeman). Among the young women in the group is shy Audrey (Carolyn Farina; no relation to Dennis as far as I know).

Tom keeps getting invited back to the parties, which seem to be a nightly occurrence during the Christmas ball season. One of the guys in the group, Charlie, seems to take a bit of a liking to Tom, as Charlie has a theory about this social milieu being the UHB (the urban haute bourgeoisie) and the last generation of a dying breed. Audrey also takes a liking to Tom, albeit in a romantic sense. This isn't quite reciprocated, as Tom has feelings for Serena, who in her turn doesn't reciprocate for Tom.

One person who was apparently a former member of this social circle but is now something of an outsider is Rick Von Sloneker (Will Kempe), who is the sort of person Nick considers a jerk, being self-centered and more concerned with sex instead of love, not caring about how he treats the women in his life. Indeed, Nick tells the story of one such woman and how Von Sloneker drove her to commit suicide. Nick later confides in Tom that the story is false, but in service of a greater truth, in that the woman is actually a composite of all of Von Sloneker's women.

Who knows what the real truth is, but Tom begins to discover that Nick's actions have a way of hurting people, even if that isn't the intention. Eventually Audrey is so fed up with the social circle that she decides to go off to Von Sloneker's place in the Hamptons, and when Tom learns of this, he realizes that perhaps he loves Audrey after all and wants to rescue her.

Other reviewers who have commented on Metropolitan have made a comparison to Woody Allen, which is certainly apt, as I too found myself thinking of Allen's film Manhattan. Of course, Stillman is writing about a much younger and less neurotic type of person than Allen was. In theory, these are supposed to be unlikeable characters, including Tom and his idiotic socialist views (and an arrogant comment about not reading fiction, just literary criticism about the fiction). Yet in some ways I found myself thinking about myself at that age. Not that I had friends who were as well-off as the characters in this movie, but at the same time my circle of friends wound up being the upper-middle-class kids, while I was decidedly working class by background. Not that I ever had any attraction to socialism, however.

So in that regard, the movie really works. It says a lot that a movie where everybody should be intensely unlikeable winds up holding your attention so well, and not out of a desire to see these people get their comeuppance in general. I'm generally not particularly interested in New York City, either, as somebody living in the part of the state outside of the metropolitan area and have always palpably felt the contempt the part of New York City depicted here has for the rest of us. But still, I found the movie quite enjoyable.

Metropolitan has received a pricey DVD release on the Criterian Collection, but as a standalone and as part of a set with two other Stillman movies.