Whit Stillman might be my favorite director of the '90s. Why? For one simple reason: he doesn't insult my intelligence. He's aware that the type of people who go to his films have read a few books, and doesn't dumb down his dialogue to accomodate the half of the population with below average intelligence. IMHO, he writes the best dialogue of almost any screenwriter I've encountered. Like Quentin Tarintino, a lot of his dialogue is hip and ironic, and he plays off old cultural referents (and is perhaps a bit too clever for his own good), but his cultural referents include Jane Austin, 19th century French socialists, The Death of a Salesman, and...disco? Life among the rich, bored, and shallow has never been this smart or entertaining.
Metropolitan (1990): A comedy of manners - quaint concept, no? Yes, and this movie takes as subject matter the dissolving of such quaint, archaic concepts as debutantes, the aristocracy, and girls who want to live in a Jane Austen novel. Revolving around parties held by college-age rich kids in Manhattan, this is like an East Coast Bret Easton Ellis without the decadence, and with brains. Not many movies these days center their climax around protecting a female virgin's honor. Few movies contain dialogue as sharp as in the scene in which a character announces that he never reads books - he only reads book reviews, because then you have it both ways: the book's plot and commentary. No movie I have ever seen contains a subplot involving Charles Fourier (don't feel bad, I didn't know who he was until I saw this movie, either. Hey - a movie taught me something! When was the last time that happened?).
Grade: A
Barcelona (1994): The plot's considerably livelier than Metropolitan, but I still can't make up my mind which film I like more. A great anti-anti-American film, perhaps the best ever: Stillman deals with a complex subject - early '80s anti-Americanism in Cold War Spain - and treats it well, and I daresay evenhandedly. Two young Americans, one an officer and another a businessman, enter Barcelona at the height of Spain's sexual revolution, and become involved with a couple of gorgeous Spanish women working for the World's Trade Fair. Still, even though there's more action, it still works primarily as a highly entertaining comedy/love story. Run to your video store if you haven't seen this, and rent it this weekend - they don't make movies of this quality very often.
Grade: A
The Last Days of Disco (1998): Sorely underrated and commercially ignored, this is a bit of a letdown after Stillman's first two films - but it's still better than 90% of the moronic drivel Hollywood pumps out. Not that I don't love mindless moronic drivel - laughed all the way through Baseketball - but, as I said, I appreciate the rare director who doesn't treat me like I have the IQ of an inbred. Set in the early '80s among a similar set of characters (and some of the cast) that populated Metropolitan, this traces the romantic relationships of young preppies in the urban not-so-jungle. The truly annoying thing is the incongrous timeline: though set in the early '80s, the soundtrack comes from the late '70s, the term "yuppie" is bandied about several years before it became a commonplace insult, and the footage of the infamous "Disco Sucks" rally occurred in 1979. There's really no plot, and if you have a short attention span or don't care about smart and witty dialogue, then don't watch this, since the movie consists of nothing but witty dialogue. Stillman has a knack for making you actually want to get involved with extremely shallow, selfishly materialistic brats of the pampered upper class; he subverts convention by siding with the aristocracy rather than the proles. The male characters aren't drawn very well and can be hard to tell apart, but the female are much more interesting. Apart from a bit of drug abuse, there's not much Boogie Nights decadence, and the film is far, far better than the dreary 54. In the best scene, the group of friends deconstruct The Lady and the Tramp as if they're discussing Kafka - some may call this unrealistic, but I beg to differ - that's the way real people really talk, at least if you've been to college (as most people do these days). I myself have had ridiculous conversations of that nature many a time, and this scene is even better than the famous deconstruction of Madonna lyrics in Reservoir Dogs.
Grade: A-