Twilight of the Urban Haute Bourgeoise

Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan (1990) is a film about the disintegration of a social circle and a social class. The story centers on Tom Townsend (Edward Clements), a Princeton freshman back in Manhattan for a Christmas vacation. Tom is a self-proclaimed follower of Charles Fourier, who decides to attend a debutante ball for, he explains, purely sociological reasons. As a result of a quixotic act of courtesy, Tom gets invited to the afterparty at Sally Fowler’s (Dylan Hundley), a young Manhattan doyenne at the center of her own ‘Rat Pack’. There he meets Charlie Black (Taylor Nichols), a philosopher anxious about his own downward social mobility, Nick Smith (Christopher Eigeman), the circle’s wit and central intelligence, and Audrey Rouget (Carolyn Farina), a shy and bookish girl whom we see at the very beginning of the film despairing over her hideous white debutante gown.