Christmas with the Darcys

Here we encounter an actual film review: unexpected, certainly; unseemly in a publication as scholarly as The Byzantine Review…maybe debatable. Or in the argot of the current day, WTF?

Year-end turns out to be a terrible time either to read serious history or to review it: there’s just too much going on. Plus, last year I got glitter in my genealogical charts and I haven’t been able to look at the Plantagenets the same way since. So this month we are admitting defeat and presenting you with a charming, small, holiday movie; an antidote to It’s a Wonderful Life and the incessant march of cooking competition shows. (Asked how he got the penguins to dance around his gingerbread house, a recent contestant answered, “Little servo motors in the marzipan.” Yes, I do believe he was gay.) Metropolitan is a film written, produced, and directed by Whit Stillman and released in 1990.

No, there is no clever historical twist to the movie, unless you are young enough to consider 1990 history. Which, to my horror, you do. There is also a bit of a Jane Austen angle, although less of one than appears at the beginning, so consider the movie even if Jane makes you itch. It is an original story line, with Austen serving as a marker that what follows is in fact a comedy of manners.

The manners in question are those of the children of successful, rich parents; kids worried about making their own place in the world, the real possibility of downward mobility, and the ever-present matter of just who is zooming whom. Like a lot of literature, it is a dialogue-centric work, and if your family holidays run a little more toward people yapping their world views than Donna Reed helping an angel get his wings, you’ll feel right at home. Stillman’s treatment of the ongoing, incessant dialogue of people in their late ‘teens and twenties is one of the film’s major strengths, hitting the right balance between tedium and hilarious self-absorption.

The backstory (for which the Curmudgeon is indebted to TCM, that oft-footnoted historical source) is that the film is an “indie” production, one self-financed by writer/producer/director Stillman. We are told that to raise money for the picture he offered up his apartment…not directly as collateral, but as an option contract to purchase the place at below-market rates should he fail to repay. Very New York…he lived the life he films.

The cast – male and female – are uniformly young, well-scrubbed, and cute as a bug’s ear. All of them were film or acting students and friends of the writer/producer/director…if they strike you as unduly homogenous and attractive, you can revel in the fact that now they are firmly ensconced in middle age and the fight with gravity. The romantic leads can carry their parts, mercifully. Audrey (played by Carolyn Farina) is both an Elizabeth Bennet type and proof that at one time, “Demi Moore” was both a person and a look. Tom (played by Edward Clements) is a symphony of cheekbones, red hair, and big ideas…in a reversal of Austen, his Mr. Darcy is the chatty one.

On the downside, there’s nothing specifically gay in the work. To my eye all the actors are straight as a board, or at least as straight as actors get. And sadly for a group obsessed with getting laid, very little skin is in evidence. The strip poker party is all white undies and black socks, the action limited to removal of one sock and the threatened removal of a skirt, at which time the camera cuts. Yes, it is an antiquated film. On the upside for a holiday movie, while their risks and trials seem very real to the characters, there are no horrible past life experiences driving them…divorce, sexual wantonness, and a brief fling with mescaline are as bad as it gets. Plus the longest taxi ride on film, and a tanning session. Most of it set to cha-cha music. In keeping with the season, one ends the film feeling good, actually.

Which is the whole point. It is admittedly tempting to do a full-on Austenian analysis of the work, but this is Christmas vacation, and I am sparing us both. (Clarence, lay off that bell!) The movie isn’t really a Christmas movie at all, it is a fun little rom-com with decorations thrown in to make it pretty. If the independent nature of Metropolitan’s production shows a bit around the edges, it is worth remembering there’s a place for the homemade at Christmas. Just like the self-obsessed young.

And that’s a wrap, at least for this year. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and a Happy and obscenely prosperous New Year to all!

The Curmudgeon

(…Back to your desk, Cratchit!)