Metropolitan is a 1990 American romanticcomedy-drama film produced, written and directed by Whit Stillman, in his feature directorial debut. The film concerns the lives of a group of wealthy young socialites during debutante season in Manhattan. In addition to some of their debutante parties, it covers their frequent informal after-hours gatherings at a friend's Upper East Side apartment, where they discuss life, philosophy and their fate; form attachments, romances and intrigues; and react to an interesting but less well-to-do newcomer.
During Manhattan debutante season, middle-class Princeton student Tom Townsend attends a deb ball on a whim. A mix-up over a taxi home introduces him to a small group of young Upper East Side socialites known as the Sally Fowler Rat Pack, after the girl whose fancy apartment they use for afterparties. The Rat Pack invites him to the night’s afterparty to prevent ill feelings.
At the afterparty, Tom befriends several Rat Pack members, including Nick, a cynic who takes Tom under his wing; Audrey, a shy girl who enjoys Regency-era literature and develops a crush on Tom; and Charlie, a philosophical friend with an unrequited crush on Audrey. Tom learns that he and the Rat Pack have some common friends, including his ex-girlfriend Serena, with whom he remains infatuated.
Under Nick's tutelage, Tom ingratiates himself with the Rat Pack. Although he initially sticks out due to his left-wing, Fourierist views, he fits into the social crowd and becomes a full-fledged member. Much of the film is composed of dialogues in which the Rat Pack discuss their nebulous social scene and uncertain futures. They worry that they are coming of age just as the culture in which they were raised is ending.
One reason Tom fits in is that his social cachet trumps his wealth. He attended the Pomfretboarding school at the same time that Serena went to Farmington with several Rat Pack girls. Nick explains that the Rat Pack needs Tom because there is a shortage of socially respectable young men to escort debutantes to formal events.
Tom’s wealthy father abandoned the family to marry another woman, forcing Tom and his mother to move into a middle-class apartment on the Upper West Side. As a result, Tom harbors a love–hate relationship with wealth and the upper class. He slowly realizes that he is in denial about his distant relationship with his father.
Serena has been dating Rick Von Sloneker, a young, titledaristocrat notorious for his womanizing. Nick resents Rick and accuses him of getting a girl drunk and convincing her to "pull a train" several years ago, after which she committed suicide. When Rick confronts him, Nick admits that his story is a "composite" of incidents from Rick's life. He insists that it is based on real events, but the Rat Pack is scandalized.
As debutante season ends, the Rat Pack unravels. Nick leaves Manhattan. During a parlor game, Tom admits he loves Serena and not Audrey. In response, Audrey leaves to spend the rest of the vacation with Rick and their mutual friend Cynthia in the Hamptons. Charlie, who tells himself that society is out to get the elite, is surprised to hear that other young elites have achieved success in life. Tom learns that Sally is surreptitiously dating Allen, an older record producer; it is implied that Allen promised to make her a star.
Realizing that he has developed feelings for Audrey, Tom recruits Charlie to help him rescue her from Rick. The two travel to Southampton, bonding en route. They are surprised to find Audrey in no peril. Tom and Charlie instigate a fight with Rick, who asks them to leave. Audrey is delighted to see that Tom and Charlie have come for her, and leaves with them.
Tom and Audrey talk on the beach. Audrey says she is planning to attend college in France, and Tom contemplates visiting her there. Tom, Audrey, and Charlie begin hitchhiking to Manhattan together.
Whit Stillman wrote the screenplay for Metropolitan between 1984 and 1988 while running an illustration agency in New York, and financed it by selling his apartment for $50,000, and with contributions from family members and friends. Including post-production, the film cost $210,000 to make.[6] Stillman wanted to set the film in the past, possibly in the pre-Woodstock 1960s, but the budget did not allow for a strict period film to be made. Instead, he added period details to give the film an "aura of the past", like vintage Checker Cabs, and excluded anything too specific to the present day.[6] The film recalls a time when the Upper West Side had not yet gentrified and was "considered more intellectual and less patrician than the Upper East Side."[7]
Themes
Leading commentators such as Emanuel Levy[8] have called the film a comedy of manners. In her book Jane Austen and Co., Suzanne R. Pucci compares the film to Austen's novels and those of Henry James, such as The Wings of the Dove.[9] For Pucci, the film deserves full membership in the class of 20th- and early 21st-century Austen remakes such as Ruby in Paradise (1993) and Bridget Jones's Diary (2001). According to her, the film tracks "the Austen phenomenon beyond Austen, into what [is called] the 'post-heritage' film, a kind of historical costume drama that uses the past in a deliberate or explicit way to explore current issues in cultural politics".[10]
In 2015, The New Yorker film critic Richard Brody wrote that Metropolitan is about the plight of America's upper class, or what the film's characters call the "urban haute bourgeoisie", and the "possibility—the necessity—and the difficulty of breaking out of their world and connecting with the wider world, for the benefit of the wider world".[11] Muriel Zagha notes that the film's characters are haunted by a sense of "self-questioning and unease at the perspective of social decline and a descent into irrelevance." This "elegaic mood" is reflected by Charlie's overt worries about the future, as well as the books the characters read: for example, Tom reads Spengler's The Decline of the West and Audrey reads Auchincloss's The Rector of Justin, a novel about "the collapse of high-minded traditional WASP society values."[7]
Mark Henrie, editor of the book Doomed Bourgeois in Love: Essays on the Films of Whit Stillman, writes that Metropolitan is a conservative film, that uses "mocking affection, gentle irony, and a blizzard of witty dialogue" to help us "see what is admirable and necessary in the customs and conventions of America's upper class".[12] In 2009, National Review named it the third-best conservative film, with Henrie writing, "With mocking affection, gentle irony, and a blizzard of witty dialogue, Stillman manages the impossible: He brings us to see what is admirable and necessary in the customs and conventions of America's upper class."[13]
Reception
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 93% based on 41 reviews, with an average rating of 7.7/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Metropolitan gently skewers the young socialite class with a smartly written dramedy whose unique, specific setting yields rich universal truths".[14]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 77 out of 100, based on 5 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[15]
The film grossed $2.9 million in the United States and Canada and $7 million worldwide.[16][3]
↑ Gyford, Phil (February 14, 2009). "Two 'Metropolitan' items". Whitestillman.org. Archived from the original on October 11, 2022. Retrieved October 11, 2022.
Pucci, Suzanne R.; Thompson, James, eds. (2003). Jane Austen and Co.: Remaking the Past in Contemporary Culture. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. ISBN978-1-4175-1932-3. OCLC55854380.
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