Metropolitan (1990)
Directed by Whit Stillman
A radical student is adopted by a group of young New Yorkers, serves as a catalyst to alter his and their lives. Gathering in a Manhattan apartment, the group of friends meet to discuss social mobility, Fourier's socialism and play bridge in their cocoon of upper-class society - until they are joined by a man with a critical view of their way of life.
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What critics compared Metropolitan to
Like Stillman's " Metropolitan ," " Barcelona " and " The Last Days of Disco ," it gives us a hero who is articulate, multi-lingual, sophisticated beyond his years, and awesomely self-confident.
There’s no doubt that Winick has spent a lot of time reading the Woody Allen Guide To Angst-Ridden New York Comedy and his film also owes something to Whit Stillman’s films about equally pretentious prep school types (Metropolitan, The Last Days of Disco).
Along with Whit Stillman ( Metropolitan , The Last Days of Disco ), Baumbach mined his post-collegiate ennui, best exemplified by Kicking and Screaming but also apparent in 1998s underrated Mr. Jealousy , for barbed laughs and emasculated male pathos in a way that came to define the decade, or at least its independent film movement.
Of course, “real” people don’t talk like the characters in Abraham Polonsky’s Force of Evil (1948), Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan (1990), or Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Lobster (2015), to pluck but three examples of stylized screenwriting out of the ether, and you could argue that the artifice of Sorrentino’s dialogue is encouraged by the fact that he’s dealing with show people and artists, and that the world of this hotel is a stage for once-and-current performers of one type or another (“Men, artists, animals, plants . . .
Think of it as Whit Stillman's innocent "Metropolitan" as reinvented by a pervert with a bad attitude, to say nothing of heartburn.
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In retrospect, the components of Whit Stillman's 1990s trilogy (Metropolitan, Barcelona, and The Last Days of Disco) acquire their resonance from observing the quiet passing of ephemeral things: Metropolitan celebrates and mourns the specific character of a place and time, youthful associations and crushes, a toolkit of values, even if those values are not exactly shared by, say, housewives in Duluth and auto mechanics in Albuquerque.
Depending on the current cultural climate at any time since their original release, movies like Metropolitan and The Last Days of Disco, recently issued on Blu-ray by The Criterion Collection , could seem like antiquated, elitist gabfests or literate, barbed critiques.
Stillman would develop greater facility with the camera in later films (especially The Last Days Of Disco ), but he’s never topped Metropolitan’s plethora of quotable lines, expertly delivered by a superb ensemble of unknowns (most of whom have stayed that way).
It's interesting that Whit Stillman, the writer-director-producer of Metropolitan (1990) and Barcelona (1994) would make a movie that features disco dancing.
The Last Days of Disco isn't a bad satire, but it isn't up to the level of Metropolitan or Barcelona, Stillman's previous two films.
The movie is the latest sociological romance by Whit Stillman (" Metropolitan "' " Barcelona "), who nails his characters with perfectly heard dialogue and laconic satire.
That same period has fueled at least two decades of self-reflexive storytelling, from Whit Stillman ’s “Metropolitan” to Lena Dunham’s “Girls” (to name two New York examples), and here brings a revitalized Baumbach back to his snappy “Kicking and Screaming” roots.
(This gabby method of characterization is what Whit Stillman generally succeeded at in Metropolitan but fumbled in Barcelona.)