Metropolitan

Christmas holidays in Manhattan. A group of wealthy college students goes to debutante balls every night and then gathers at someone's apartment to talk until morning. Tom does not belong to this circle; he has no money, his dinner jacket is rented and he reads socialism. He is with them every night anyway. The subject is not class but a set that knows it is ending. These young people consider themselves the last representatives of a historically finished class and say so themselves; both the comedy and the melancholy come from that awareness. The form is almost entirely conversation: sitting rooms, taxi rides, apartment lobbies. No action, no incident, no change of setting. It is Whit Stillman's first film. He mortgaged his own apartment to make it and the budget was tiny; most of the cast were not professionals and some never acted again. It drew attention at Sundance and was nominated for the original screenplay Oscar, an unexpected result for a production at that scale. Edward Clements plays Tom and Chris Eigeman the sharpest tongue in the group. Who it is for: viewers who like independent cinema built on dialogue. Who it is not for: anyone waiting for incident; the film talks from beginning to end and does it deliberately.