The writer-director Whit Stillman achieves a rarified atmosphere in his first film: the intellectual and social interaction among a group of Park Avenue socialites during the Christmas debutante season.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 9, 2023

Metropolitan results in being as wise as it is fun. [Full review in Spanish]

| Nov 11, 2022

Metropolitan introduced us to an intriguing new cinematic voice in Whit Stillman, and it stands as an utterly unique and highbrow example of the kind of cinema that's increasingly harder to find.

| Nov 19, 2020

It's as though the world of F Scott Fitzgerald has been caught in a time warp, complete with a social interloper.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 15, 2020

Stillman sketches his characters with gentle humor, capturing not only their foibles and foolishnesses but the earnest intentions behind them.

| Jun 15, 2020

Metropolitan is a melancholic lament for not-quite-doomed youth-a self-styled new "lost generation" that isn't really lost, but might just never have a purpose.

| Jun 15, 2020

Though the ensemble, on the whole, seem a scotch older than the characters they're playing, there's a fidelity in their Awkward Age emotional peculiarities that makes them absolutely convincing.

| Jun 15, 2020

Overall I enjoyed Metropolitan and I think the script by Whit Stilman is outstanding.

| Original Score: B+ | Mar 11, 2019

It is difficult to describe it without making it sound precious -- but in fact it is fresh, funny and very appealing.

| Aug 30, 2018

Whit Stillman's directorial debut is a terrifically satirical portrayal of the upper echelons of New York society.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 9, 2018

Stillman hasn't made as hermetically appealing a movie since, but for those lamenting the absence of the written word in modern comedy - rather than the improvisationally blurted-out kind - "Metropolitan" makes for delightful memory-lane viewing.

| Aug 13, 2015

Metropolitan has always felt like a movie that exists in a strange, insular little bubble of its own, utterly divorced from the personal experience of virtually anyone who watches it.

| Original Score: A | Aug 6, 2015

It might make you long for a return to movies in which teens have a greater vocabulary than their parents.

| Aug 4, 2015

Stillman films these rounds of romance and jealousy, old mind-sets and new friendships, as scintillating dialectical jousts in which verbal blows take the place of action and leave lasting emotional wounds.

| Aug 3, 2015

Whit Stillman's "urban haute bourgeoisie" are redeemed because the filmmaker takes custody of them, their idiosyncrasies, their flaws.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 2, 2015

You get the feeling that you're eavesdropping on real conversation rather than the polite chit-chat you might expect at actual events, and seeing those aristocratic tendencies fall away to reveal scared human beings is part of the movie's infinite charm.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Sep 4, 2012

Stillman's script is so present at every moment that it's easy to overlook how precisely the film has been directed.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Apr 10, 2012

Unusual subject matter handled with competent self-assurance.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 18, 2008

Whit Stillman's crafty independent feature about wealthy Park Avenue teenagers and a middle-class boy who joins their ranks over one Christmas vacation is certainly well imagined, and impressively acted by a cast of newcomers.

| Jul 18, 2008

A witty, urbane portrait of Manhattan's debutante scene.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 18, 2008