Quote:
As a movie about debutantes and their dates, Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan came into the world in 1990 looking lonely—and now, well, it looks lonelier yet. At the time, the idea of putting the American upper class on film—The Philadelphia Story aside—seemed like a sure way to keep theaters pleasantly uncrowded. Before the movie came out, it was hard to imagine anyone but its subjects wanting to see such a thing, and as for its subjects, did they really exist? America fancied itself a classless society, and old money assisted the illusion by concealing itself and shunning anecdote. Nowadays, you may wonder whether there is anyone left on Park Avenue whose fortune antedates the second Reagan administration. New money is so loud and so insistent that old money has either slipped discreetly away to ancestral hideouts or, as it were, gone native. Metropolitan, which looked like a perverse bit of daring in 1990, today seems like an artifact from an earlier century.

But it’s a lot more than a curiosity. Metropolitan, Stillman’s first movie, is as unexpectedly irresistible as ever: funny, moving, and entertaining, with a wonderful cast of unknowns (who have remained unknown) and quite a number of ideas, served up seamlessly and unassumingly. The story takes place in New York, during Christmas vacation, a hectic time filled with gala soirees. At the center of the composition is a group of friends who call themselves the Sally Fowler Rat Pack, after the one of their number who hosts the postdance skull sessions that supply the setting for much of the picture. As the movie begins, the seven members annex an eighth, a lone wolf named Tom Townsend, to even the gender balance in the face of a “severe escort shortage.” Tom acts as both the story’s catalyst and the audience’s knothole viewpoint.

The Rat Pack is composed of a delicately varied assortment of personalities. Sally Fowler herself (Dylan Hundley), a chipper contralto blonde, turns out to harbor smoldering ambition. Fred Neff (Bryan Leder) is mordantly self-aware, when he isn’t passed out on the couch. Jane Clarke (Allison Rutledge-Parisi) aspires to queen bee status, which makes her come off as older than the rest of the crowd. Cynthia McLean (Isabel Gillies) is sensual and capable of treachery. Charlie Black (Taylor Nichols) is bespectacled and already a walking op-ed column. Audrey Rouget (Carolyn Farina) is sensitive, pure of heart, and a bit dowdy. Nick Smith (Christopher Eigeman), the pack’s real leader, occupies center stage most of the time and is so armored by irony that it takes a while to realize he means everything he says. Tom (Edward Clements) is necessarily the figure who sets himself apart from the crowd, the insecure rebel and proudly hesitant prospective member.

Tom is, in fact, whether he likes it or not, not quite one of them. His parents are divorced, and even though he comes from the right background, he now lives on the infra dig Upper West Side (back when the Upper West Side was infra dig) with his mother, who has no money of her own. Thus he spends a lot of time concealing his deficiencies—that his tuxedo is rented, for example, or that he wears a raincoat because he can’t afford an overcoat. Both idealism and defensiveness propel his jejune political and literary pronouncements—he declares himself a Fourierist, for example, which is to say that he wants to be a partisan of the radically impossible. The story gets rolling when Audrey falls in love with Tom, which prompts him to actively resume his dormant infatuation with the icily distant Serena Slocum (Elizabeth Thompson). The narrative assumes its full shape with the appearance of Rick Von Sloneker (Will Kempe), a fantastically archetypal cad.

Metropolitan is an unashamedly literary film. Tom is unmistakably an offspring of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s sincere young heroes, although the world he enters is more closely knit and fundamentally provincial than Fitzgerald’s haut monde. It is, in fact, a fishbowl out of Jane Austen. (None of these allusions are exactly concealed by the director, who also wrote the script.) Austen is virtually a character in the story, but Stillman manages to avoid its seeming coy when, for example, Tom and Audrey argue about the “immorality” of the young players in Mansfield Park (Tom, characteristically, has not read the book, but relies on Lionel Trilling’s account, since critics spare readers needless toil by supplying the writer’s views as well as their own). The dialogue is ostentatiously written; every character wields subordinate clauses and uses words like however and nevertheless. The combination of stilted speeches and deft behavioral acting sometimes seems peculiar, but it is also peculiarly apposite. Like Austen, Stillman wears his irony lightly and deploys it affectionately.

The look of Metropolitan derives from a very different tradition, in part because the movie was made on a tiny budget that restricted locations and virtually precluded camera movement. Stillman and his resourceful cinematographer, John Thomas, worked out a series of graceful compromises, between stasis and airiness, formal composition and liquid spontaneity. The result is a look, surprisingly apt, that is most reminiscent of the early films of Eric Rohmer; and the disarmingly daffy end sequence has a low-budget, to-hell-with-it rambunctiousness that evokes Jean-Luc Godard’s Band of Outsiders. This may seem odd at first—a picture about the rites of passage of the “urban haute bourgeoisie” might be expected to appear as impeccably composed as The Earrings of Madame de?.?.?.—but shoestring improvisation provides the metaphor for the film’s subtheme.

Urban haute bourgeoisie, or UHB (pronounced uhb), is a term coined by Charlie, who is obsessed with the ongoing failure and imminent doom of his class. Stillman obviously thinks something of the sort himself—the movie’s title is subtle in its archly irrelevant grandeur, but you wonder if Twilight of the Gods didn’t cross his mind. (At one point, Tom’s bedside book is shown to be Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West.) Fifteen years on, the picture looks positively prophetic in its choice of villain. The smirking, ponytailed Sloneker may possess a bona fide title, but he is the future of the moneyed class: trashy, smug, narcissistic, abusive, enthroned in his Hamptons beach house. The members of the Sally Fowler Rat Pack, by contrast, are preserved in amber, however temporarily—they are serious young people, most of them apparently virgins.

Charlie, pining hopelessly for an era of civic responsibility and disinterested paternalism, represents an idea of conservatism that has now disappeared altogether; he is the most obvious dinosaur. Tom, who claims to be a socialist, turns out to have more in common with Charlie than not. Audrey, who is guided through life by literary classics, has no more of a sense of class entitlement than Tom does. Nick, just as game to fight a duel as to participate in a déclassé, nationally televised ball featuring debs from the hinterlands and their military escorts, is a romantic fatalist who would be at home everywhere and nowhere. Sally is fully endowed with poise and decorativeness, but she wants to be a pop star. Jane, who will probably be the first to get married, may also be the first to go on television. Cynthia has such a deeply rooted sense of privilege that she seems fated to end up in a Page Six scandal. Each of them is attempting to juggle two sets of values. At one point near the end, Tom and Fred are in a bar with Charlie, who has just finally delivered the eschatological sermon on class that has been building up in him. They spot a guy in his late thirties, and Charlie appeals to him for confirmation of his ideas. The graybeard doesn’t laugh or walk away but says, in effect, just get on with things. The point is clear, if unspectacular: realism and compromise are necessary if you want to stay alive.

This may sound dully practical, but the story’s unforced symmetry and the characters’ very credible complexities fill it out beautifully, and the movie’s plasticity makes it even seem adventurous. Form really does follow function in this film: its classicism is appropriate to the past of its imperiled class, while its ad-lib New Wave verve provides the equipment for facing the future. No less than any of the 1959 breakthrough works of the Cahiers du cinéma crowd, Metropolitan is a triumph of slap-up improvisation over limited resources, and it tells a tale that echoes that of its own construction: it is about making do. As such, it is as much a timeless story about the perils of growing up as it is an account of historically specific change and imbalance. The movie certainly does not concern itself with political questions—the actual money and power that lie behind the cultural anxiety and ritualistic tinsel of the upper bourgeoisie go unmentioned—but it is, after all, a movie about kids. It has remained remarkably fresh, and the elegantly choreographed tension of its many sets of oppositions suggests that it will appear no less fresh when its cultural specifics require footnotes. It is, like any product of good breeding should be, both well rooted and well aired.

Whit Stillman - (1990) Metropolitan.mkv

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Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1h 38mn
Size: 	2.02 GiB
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Audio
#1:  	English 1.0ch AC-3 @ 256 Kbps
#2:  	English 2.0ch AC-3 @ 256 Kbps (Audio commentary by Stillman, editor Christopher Tellefsen, and actors C. Eigeman and Taylor Nichols)

https://nitro.download/view/CC1916643A9F9F1/Whit_Stillman_-_(1990)_Metropolitan.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

The post Whit Stillman – Metropolitan (1990) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Roger Ebert wrote:
“The Last Days of Disco” is about people who would like to belong to the kinds of clubs that would accept them as members. It takes place in “the very early 1980s” in Manhattan, where a group of young, good-looking Ivy League graduates dance the night away in discos. Unlike the characters in “Saturday Night Fever,” who were basically just looking for a good time, these upwardly mobile characters are alert to the markers of social status. New York magazine is their textbook, and being admitted to the right clubs is the passing grade.

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The movie is the latest sociological romance by Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan”‘ “Barcelona”), who nails his characters with perfectly heard dialogue and laconic satire. His characters went to good schools, have good jobs and think they’re smarter than they are. “Alice, one of the things I’ve noticed is that people hate being criticized,” says Charlotte, who seems quietly proud of this wisdom. They are capable of keeping a straight face while describing themselves as “adherents to the disco movement.” Alice (Chloe Sevigny, from “Kids”) is the smartest member of the crowd, and definitely the nicest. She has values. Her best friend Charlotte (Kate Beckinsale) only has goals: to meet the right guys, to be popular, to do exactly what she imagines someone in her position should be doing. Both girls are regulars at a fashionable disco. Charlotte is forever giving poor Alice advice about what to say and how to behave; she says guys like it when a girl uses the word “sexy,” and a few nights later, when a guy tells Alice he collects first editions of Scrooge McDuck comic books, she faithfully observes that she has always found Uncle Scrooge sexy.

The last days of disco - W. Stillman (1998).mkv

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Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1h 53mn
Size: 	2.95 GiB
Video
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Resolution: 	1024x576 
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Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
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Audio
#1:  	English 2.0ch AC-3 @ 256 Kbps
#2:  	2.0ch AC-3 @ 192 Kbps (Audio commentary by Stillman and actors Chris Eigeman and Chloë Sevigny)

https://nitro.download/view/B5E4E2D70C24504/The_last_days_of_disco_-_W._Stillman_(1998).mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

The post Whit Stillman – The Last Days of Disco (1998) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Before there was Woody Allen’s 2008 Vicky Cristina Barcelona, there was Whit Stillman’s far rawer, less warm and fuzzy Barcelona, released in 1994. Set in 1980s Barcelona, the film explores a period of particularly notable anti-American sentiment. While marketing/sales rep Ted Boynton (Taylor Nichols) does his best to keep a low profile while working abroad for his Chicago-based company, the unexpected arrival of his naval officer cousin, Fred Boynton (Chris Eigeman), throws a wrench into Ted’s plans for tranquil solitude.

Ted and Fred (yes, the name pairing somewhat conjures the image of Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum) have had a longstanding tension over an event that happened between them when they were ten years old–that event being Fred stealing Ted’s kayak, but, according to Fred, simply borrowing it. Nonetheless, Ted can’t deny that a certain companionship has been missing from his life after a disastrous relationship with a woman named Betty and his newfound philosophy that, “I’m beginning to reconsider my entire attitude toward female beauty. I think it’s very bad, really. You see a beautiful girl and you’re immediately subject to all these emotions–some of them very powerful, almost uncontrollable. You haven’t even spoken with the girl and already you want to marry and spend the rest of your life with her. This inordinate concern for physical beauty has wrecked more lives than–” Fred cuts him off, “Wrecked?” Ted trails off from his diatribe as they decide to leave, at which time Fred is called the Spanish word for fascist, “facha,” prompting him to insist on getting another drink elsewhere to recover from this traumatizing incident.

At the next bar, Ted continues expounding on his new plan in dealing with women. “I just think this thing of always falling in love with incredibly attractive girls is really bad. Maybe it’s about resolving to go out only with plain or even rather homely girls. I’ve got a real romantic illusion problem. Instead of a fantasy built on the pretty slope of an eyebrow or the curl of an upper lip–to see the real person, maybe even look into her eyes and see her soul.” Of course, Fred thinks Ted’s theory is crazy and tells him it’s just as possible for him to meet the woman of his dreams in a pretty girl format–which, inevitably, he does after meeting Montserrat Raventos (Tushka Bergen), a “trade fair girl” who meets him at a movie theater in the stead of her “homely” friend, only to learn she still has a boyfriend, the philandering, American-hating journalist Ramon (Pep Munné).

Meanwhile, Fred has found a romantic entanglement of his own upon encountering one of Ted’s acquaintances, Marta Ferrer (Mira Sorvino, sporting a believable accent), on the street as he’s crossing out anti-American graffiti. As Fred and Ted sink deeper and deeper into the Barcelonan lifestyle–and the growing feelings they have for their significant others–their cultural differences become all the more glaring, with Fred defending, “‘Yankee’ and ‘gringo’ are obviously pejorative, but it’s the standard dictionary term that’s the most insulting of all. ‘Estadunidense.’ Dense. D-E-N-S-E. It’s the same spelling. Dense: thick, stupid. Every time you hear it. Estadunidense-dense-dense. It’s like a direct slap in the face. It’s incredible.”

The more their hearts become involved, the less Fred and Ted seem to get along–especially once Fred confesses to being in love with Montserrat. Plus, matters intensify when Montserrat’s boyfriend prints an accusatory article about Fred being in the CIA. This eventually leads to an assassination attempt on Fred after he’s kicked out of Ted’s apartment and sees Marta cheating on him when he goes to her for refuge.

While Fred is in a coma, Ted feels incredible guilt for falsely accusing him of stealing some money from his stash (it turns out to be Marta who was responsible) and vows to stay by his side until he recovers. Some of the trade fair girls come by to help keep watch, including one who ends up falling in love with Ted–which aids in cushioning the blow in his loss of Montserrat.

The fact that Fred would be gunned down over hearsay/simply being an American is not something that was unbelievable then, or now. More than ever, anti-American sentiment seems to pervade the global perception of a country that, as Marta points out, consists of “all those loud, badly dressed, fat people watching their eighty channels of television and visiting shopping malls. The plastic throw-everything-away society with its notorious violence and racism. And finally, the total lack of culture.” But at least we have Whit Stillman movies to prove this generalization wrong.

2.14GB | 1h 41mn | 1024×560 | mkv

https://nitroflare.com/view/6B137FC906C34D8/Whit_Stillman_-_%281994%29_Barcelona.part1.rar
https://nitroflare.com/view/D8054ADC0EDD7D5/Whit_Stillman_-_%281994%29_Barcelona.part2.rar
https://nitroflare.com/view/3C18CAD3ACD4700/Whit_Stillman_-_%281994%29_Barcelona.part3.rar

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

The post Whit Stillman – Barcelona (1994) first appeared on Cinema of the World.