February. The only month of the year that brings an inescapable but all too familiar sense of hum-dudgeon.* The fact that we have spent this blue month in total lockdown has no doubt exacerbated, rather than alleviated, this. So perhaps a short, care-free and party centred (remember those?) antidote to this glum time may be ‘Metropolitan’ - Whit Stillman’s 1990 film that follows a small group of privileged and socially fixated teenagers as they peacock from one ornate townhouse to another during the GalaDebutante Season of Manhattan.
Thrust into a garish yellow taxi, and subsequently this socially fixated group, is Tom Townsend - an outsider (just like us), he is less privileged, lives with his mother and is vehemently opposed to capitalism, preppie culture and these cosy after-parties (that’s up to you…).
Tom is open about his reservations to the group’s social ideals as they discuss literature, politics, religion and economics - not the usual conversational cocktail for a late night/early morning session I grant you, but the dialogue that Stillman entrusts to these young characters is remarkable, hilarious and somehow totally appropriate. The casual sincerity with which they probe and debate one another offers an unexpected lightness to these topics that rings true with this anachronistic group. The spectacled Charlie Black offers a near constant stream of consciousness that sums up the lexicon of the circle best. He searches for specificity and detail on these intellectual issues with reasonable success but where he finds purpose in language he yearns for it in his own life.
And yet there is more to this than Woody Allenesque dialogue(although if that’s your thing, start now) as a love triangle emerges…or is it an octet? The fragile Audrey loves Tom. Tom, oblivious to Audrey’s eye, loves the elusive Serena Slocum (what a name!). And Serena loves the long-hairedBaron, Rick von Sloneker. There are peripheral relationships which flitter in and out but Tom and Audrey is the match we want.
Having started most conservatively with a game of bridge, we rapidly rise the after-party-pole to strip poker - a scene shot so invitingly by cinematographer John Thomas it leaves us wondering whether we too should be denuding ourselves and baring all - before finally arriving at the nerve-inducing ‘truth game’; during which Tom inadvertently kicks Audrey’s romantic hopes into the long grass. Silly Tom.
Audrey leaves town and an unlikely bond strikes up between Charlie and Tom as the latter realises just what he might be missing in shunning the endearing and softly spoken, Audrey. The most shy of the group (sexually and socially) there is a real sense that Audrey is yet to meet her ‘tribe’ and that perhaps her bold and brave decision to study in France will bring her true colours out. Similar in that sense, perhaps, to ‘Marianne’ in Normal People whilst at school and then university.
Not a great deal happens in ‘Metropolitan’ and that, right now, seems a welcome tonic to the stresses and strains of lockdown life. It happily floats along without great offence or action but delve deeper and you’ll find its truth lives beneath the cosy surface of tailcoats and tiaras.
With one foot in adolescence and the the other in adulthood, the insecurities they feel are universal and true but the voicing of them unique.
Their intelligence and apparent social ease is a facade in the search for their true identity, collectively and as individuals; constantly wrestling with with who they are and where their place in the world will be.You just know too, that when they reach some happy status-like place in life(whatever the hell that is…) they’ll each long for their care-free Autumn Deb season.
Still not convinced ? Well, look, it’s a film about chummy afterparties. Although, the only person that ever appears somewhat sozzled is the endearing Fred Neff, so much so that he goes cold turkey in the last third of the film, remarking:
Fred:“I haven’t had anything amusing to say since I stopped drinking.”
Tom:
"Did you have anything amusing to say before you stopped?"
Fred:“No, but it seemed amusing. Now it doesn’t.” Oh Fred…we’ve all been there.
Diolch x
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