Metropolitan

Director: Whit Stillman

1990 / 98min / 35mm

“The first feature film I edited, Metropolitan, was a strange anomaly, a no-budget film about debutantes and their escorts in New York. Whit’s charming and witty script excited me. Coming from an art and experimental film background, my challenge was to help shape the talky, fresh, and unusual project, an intimate portrait of a doomed tribe, balancing its intrinsic depth and unique humor.” —Christopher Tellefsen, ACE

One of the most iconic New York independent films of the ’90s, Metropolitan is an irresistibly quotable comedy of manners and a tour through an Upper East Side peopled by teenage patrician debutantes and dandies. When bright-eyed downwardly mobile Princetonian Edward Clements encounters a group of contemporaries self-dubbed the “Urban Haute Bourgeoisie,” fresh affections and rivalries are forged, and the newcomer is introduced to their manipulations, cruelties, and endless over-intellectualization of emotions.

Distributor: Rialto Pictures

Part of The Holidays at Metrograph: 2025