One can probably assume that the director Whit Stillman, who is a convinced East Coast resident, has studied the works of Jane Austen, to which he keeps coming back, and the "Official Preppy Handbook", those indispensable and absolutely authoritative ones Advisor on all questions of style (“no socks with loafers” is one of the most important answers in it), whose preface boils down to this sentence: “In a true democracy everyone has the right to be upper class and to live in Connecticut.”

Claudius Seidl

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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The beginning of Stillman's first and perhaps his most beautiful film looks like a film adaptation of this sentence: In "Metropolitan" the student Tom Townsend, who wears a rental tuxedo and can hardly afford the bus home, is killed by a couple of rich young New Mistaken Yorkers for one of their own and taken with them, first to one party, then to the next, all Christmas vacation.

And when it becomes obvious that he has hardly any money, it is agreed that Tom only needs a tailcoat and a tuxedo;

everything else will find itself.

He had to beg his friends

Presumably, back in the late '80s, all the producers and distributors who didn't want to invest a dollar in this script were right - which is why Whitman, who ran a design agency at the time, mortgaged the right of first refusal on his apartment and begged his wealthy friends for the rest of the budget had to. It was an extravagant and blase script, it turned into a film in which there was as much talk as only Eric Rohmer usually does. And while the opening credits suggested this film was set "not that long ago," it was impossible to place the plot historically.

The wardrobes were contemporary, but the language, in its sophistication and devoid of jargon, was not;

and as solemn and chaste as love, morality and Jane Austen were spoken of, the film's characters seemed entirely out of their time.

What Stillman staged here as the very essence of youth: not yet fully participating in the present and reality, still playing, in all innocence, with one's own thoughts.

And with the feelings of others, which is why it gets pretty serious after all.

It is part of the essence of Stillman's productions that their elegance is only an expression of respect for the taste of the audience: you sit in front of the screen, enchanted and always smiling.

That "Metropolitan" was a success might reconcile one with the whole industry;

The fact that "The Last Days of Disco" wasn't one only speaks for this film.

In 2016 he finally filmed Jane Austen: "Love & Friendship", another Stillman film with a lot of spirit and a very small budget.

John Whitney Stillman turns seventy this Tuesday.