Bloodless Coup

Metropolitan to Get the Criterion Treatment

Whoo-hoo! On February 28, 2006 the Criterion Collection will release its treatment of Whit Stillman's divine Metropolitan - at once one of the sweetest, wittiest and artistically coherent independent films every made. There are so many reasons to love this look at friendships and loves forming and shattering over one deb season/Christmas vacation in New York, not so very long ago (it appears to be set in the very early 1970's). I suppose the shattered innocence of the characters (some of whom are so well-meaning and obtuse it's just too adoreable for words - though happily they are balanced by some who are exceptionally funny, jaded and cutting) is both a commentary on the collapsing world the film is set in, and the nature of both young loves and over-intellectualizing the world. But quite apart from it's deeper meanings, watching it is a simply lovely way to spend an afternoon - listening to these 19 year olds go on and on about Fourierism, the immensely dumb sea gulls of East Hampton, and the virtues of detachable collars. It's highly entertaining, and like I said, very sweet. And those lines, those highly amusing lines:

Nick: I guess you could say it's extremely vulgar, I like it a lot.

Nick: Rick Von Slonecker is tall, rich, good looking, stupid, dishonest, conceited, a bully, liar, drunk and thief, an egomaniac, and probably psychotic. In short, highly attractive to women.

Tom: I've never been this drunk before. The problem is, with Fred no longer drinking, I can't pace myself.

Fred: Men are dates, date substitutes or potential dates.

Audrey: What Jane Austen novels have you read? Tom: None. I don't read novels. I prefer good literary criticism. That way you get both the novelists' ideas as well as the critics' thinking. With fiction I can never forget that none of it really happened, that it's all just made up by the author.

Nick: The cha cha is no more ridiculous than life itself.

And those aren't even many of the best lines (for example, the opening to the bridge game slays me more than any of the above). And I haven't even gotten to the virtues of the characters themselves (how could you not love Nick and Audrey - though I suppose I'm more Charlie myself; and sadly I was sooooo Tom when the film came out - even the right age). Watching this film was for years a personal holiday tradition, and it will be one of the first dvds I buy in 2006.

Now if someone would just get around to releasing The Last Days of Disco on dvd...