Metropolitan Movie Review

Metropolitan (1990)

Rent Metropolitan on Amazon Video (paid link)
Written by: Whit Stillman
Directed by: Whit Stillman
Starring: Carolyn Farina, Edward Clements, Taylor Nichols, Christopher Eigeman, Allison Rutledge-Parisi, Dylan Hundley, Isabel Gillies, Bryan Leder, Will Kempe, Elisabeth Thompson
Rated: PG-13
Watch the trailer

Plot
A group of young upper-class Manhattanites are blithely passing through the gala debutante season, when an unusual outsider joins them and stirs them up.

Verdict
This follows a group of rich kids and their plight over winter break. They aren't the typical protagonists, but they're at that age where they aren't quite adults and they're not children either. Wondering about their place in life and their future, they're in an era that's ending and they know it. That concern for the future spans all ages and classes. This is a movie I'd probably like more on a second watch after discovering this doesn't have much of a plot. It's a hangout movie where they discuss life, the future, and the elite. It's just that in this movie they're hanging out in high end condos dressed in evening gowns and tuxedos. It's difficult to relate to that. Their struggle isn't whether they'll have a home in the future, but how well appointed it will be.
It depends.

Review
Stillman funded the movie in part by selling his apartment. He wanted to make this a period piece but couldn't afford it, so he avoided any contemporary elements.

Tom (Edward Clements) manages to get into an after party at the condo of a rich young adult. They're all East side rich, and Tom's not. He stumbled into this due to confusion over a cab, and he's skeptical about the group. We'll later see why he has misgivings about rich kids.

These twenty somethings retreat to a condo after debutante balls while home from college. They're dressed up in tuxedos and evening gowns, talking about social life and the dire need to attend these balls. It's quite self serious as they're polishing brass on the titanic, but they're at that age where every detail in life seems so important. These kids are faced with all these decisions that seem like they'll dictate their entire futures. You don't realize how life isn't so rigid, and you're college major doesn't have to dictate your future. You need to have lived life to realize that, and they haven't.

In so many movies the pretentious twenty year olds are the antagonists, their snobbery and entitlement creating conflict with more relatable characters. This movie takes those snobby characters no one likes and puts them in the center of the plot. We infiltrate the world through Tom, who knows the world but isn't part of it.

This group is caught between child and adulthood, and Tom has a metaphorical experience when his childhood toys are thrown out. He, and the group are leaving childhood behind. These kids are wrestling with who they are, who they want to be, and how they think they're perceived. They're growing up, caught in this not quite an adult but not a kid stage and acting accordingly. It's not much more than dress up with these balls and fancy clothes but they know it's a marker for the future.

Rich kids complaining about their plights in life is not the most sympathetic subject, and there isn't a plot past that, but there is something to these kids wondering about their place in life. I'd probably like this more on the second watch, realizing what's going to happen, or not happen.