MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Metropolitan’: A Lot of Preppy Pointlessness

The privileged kids in “Metropolitan” are insufferable. Their speech is so pretentious it’s almost a dialect. Their problems are so self-indulgent you can’t bear to listen. These New York debs and preppies are vapid, apathetic and doomed--and could use a good kick in the tail.

First-time director Whit Stillman clearly had all the ingredients for a malicious satire of Manhattan society, especially the changing of the guard as the moneyed young take over from the moneyed old. But he blew it.

His movie, which he also wrote and produced based on his own experiences in the ‘70s, has been lauded by some critics as both sensitive and smart, the work of a major talent. But Stillman--who says he relied on a basic technique book, “How to Direct a Movie,” during filming--may have read too much Bret Easton Ellis, too. “Metropolitan” (released in 1990 and being shown tonight as part of the Laguna Beach Festival of Arts’ “Windows Onto an American Landscape” series) has the same kind of artificial dialogue and contrived situations one finds in Ellis’ smugly intensive probes of college-age society.

We may agree with Ellis and Stillman and other chroniclers of their generation that there’s a whole lot of pointlessness going on. But that doesn’t mean it’s very interesting.

Stillman’s focus is a tony group of socialites (they describe themselves as UHBs, an acronym for “urban haute bourgeoisie”). Watching them going to debutante balls and then reflecting on their lives in their parents’ ritzy homes is like visiting a flat alien landscape. Everything’s unusual but hard to care about.

Part of the reason is that Stillman’s characters come across as unconvincing fabrications, created in the lab as examples, not real people. There’s Nick (Christopher Eigerman), a glibly biting guy who seems like a castoff from a junior league Noel Coward production. Then there’s Charlie (Taylor Nichols), the blowhard philosopher who’s always annoying us with his analysis of everything . Assorted stuck-up girls parade about, offering their opinions, too.

“Metropolitan” would have worked better if Stillman had turned up the heat on all this self-absorption (his cast of unknowns is excellent at portraying unfettered egoism) but the plot curdles almost immediately, especially with the introduction of a fits-and-starts romance between Tom (Stillman’s alter ego, played by Edward Clements) and Audry (Carolyn Farina, easily the best actor here).

Audry is the jewel, the only really nice girl in the bunch, and Tom, although an intellectual poseur and bore, is basically a good guy with some values. You know he has values because he’s the only one from a middle-class background, living in a small apartment on the lower West Side. Farina stirs some interest, but the relationship doesn’t generate more than a gram of fascination or familiarity.

* “Metropolitan” (1990) by Whit Stillman is being shown tonight at 6 and 9 at the Festival Forum Theatre on the Festival of Arts grounds, 650 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach, as part of the “Windows Onto an American Landscape” series. $4 and $5. (714) 494-1145.