Metropolitan

Directed by Whit Stillman, Metropolitan follows Edward Clements’ Tom Townsend as he falls in with a band of wealthy friends and eventually finds himself falling for Carolyn Farina’s Audrey Rouget. Filmmaker Stillman, armed with his own screenplay, delivers a hit-and-miss endeavor that fares rather poorly within its arms-length opening stretch, as Stillman has suffused the proceedings with stylized, pompous dialogue that is, at the outset, somewhat off-putting. (And yet, in that same vein, the degree to which Stillman commits to the characters’ less-than-subtle chatter eventually becomes a little hypnotic.) It’s clear, then, that Metropolitan benefits from its appealing shot-in-NYC visuals and Chris Eigeman’s thoroughly engaging turn as the group’s most arrogant member, and while it peters out fairly noticeably within its far-from-enthralling third act, the movie does, by and large, come off as a singular piece of work that holds the viewer’s interest and attention far more effectively than one might’ve initially anticipated.

**1/2 out of ****