My next ‘mature’ festive offering is 1990’s Metropolitan, a Christmastime-set alleged ‘comedy’-drama, the debut of director and screenwriter Whit Stillman. This follows a group of privileged upper-class New York college chums who meet up nightly in swanky Manhattan apartments to play bridge, gossip and talk about social mobility and ‘Fourier’s socialism’. It’s just as exciting as that sounds.
I’ll be honest – this film is a major, major drag, and not just because it’s a very cerebral and ‘talky’ film. It’s because it’s dull as dishwater with nary a likeable character to be found. If watching rich kids wax lyrical about intellectual matters for 90 minutes sounds like your idea of a good time, then have at it, hoss, but for me this was the antithesis of what cinema at its best should be all about. Of course, highbrow critics adored it at the time and I guess I can understand why. It’s a very intelligent movie and critics, so used to being bludgeoned with clichéd cheesy nonsense and desperate for something different that might engage the grey matter, most likely lapped this up. Watching this, I feel glad to be broadening my horizons a little bit, but this does absolutely nothing for me. At first, I feel glad to have happened across a ‘mature’ festive film that isn’t all sex, drugs and knob jokes, but that feeling does not last.
There’s practically no plot and all the characters seem so far up their own arses that it’s hard to give a toss about any of them. When I was their age, it was all about downing pints and pulling questionable shapes on the dancefloor, but these socialites’ idea of a good party is sitting around trying to show how clever they are while spouting a load of drivel they obviously read somewhere and try to pass off as their own unique observations.
Our guide into this world of insufferable buzzkills is Tom (Edward Clements), a young man who almost accidentally joins the group and is perhaps not as ‘upper class’ as the rest of them. He lives in a crappy apartment with his mum and has some differing views about some things, such as not being comfortable riding in taxis, or something.
Scenes of these guys chatting remind me of Patrick Bateman and his self-obsessed, dick-swinging yuppie asshole associates blethering in American Psycho. At least in that film they were talking about inane stuff like overpriced restaurants, ‘hardbodies’, business cards and silly vacuous things you could laugh at (also: wearing a victim’s head as a hat). Here, they drone endlessly about the “bourgeoisie” as though anyone watching might give a rat’s ass. Sample quote: “I don’t read novels. I prefer good literary criticism. That way you get both the novelist’s ideas as well as the critic’s thinking.” Urgh.
That’s these kids in a nutshell – they don’t fancy the hassle of experiencing anything real. They’d much rather read about stuff in a reference book then flog the opinions as their own. I hate these people and would love to have an argument with them.
The film has some fancy decorations and it sure looks chilly most of the time, but that’s about as Christmassy as it gets. This also features almost certainly the least erotic game of strip poker committed to celluloid.
It's the sort of film where if you don’t like it, you’ll likely be accused of not being smart enough to ‘get it.’ Thing is, I understood everything these pretentious guys were talking about – I’d just rather they shut up, did some shots and throw a decent party, the kind where the conversations are about universal stuff like Star Wars and the offside rule. I’ve seen Stillman’s dialogue described as ‘wonderful,’ but if you ever actually met people who talked like this, I’m certain you’d find it hard to stop your lip curling up in disgust.
I get it that Stillman is criticizing these privileged kids and skewering their sheltered worldview, but I find no joy in having to sit through an hour and a half of this stuff. It's funny – my wife and I often tut and argue that Hollywood keeps making the same films over and over again with total disregard for originality. This one is certainly original but, having endured it, I’ll be eternally grateful to sit through Batman XII or whatever.
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