Metropolitan

"Metropolitan" (1990) is Whit Stillman's debut feature you can watch online on iFILM — made for under $250,000, nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, and still the sharpest film about a certain kind of American privilege and its slow, self-conscious decline.

Tom Townsend, a student of modest means, drifts into a circle of Upper East Side debutante-ball regulars over Christmas break. They debate Fourier, mock each other's reading lists, and move from party to party without much direction. Tom doesn't belong and everyone knows it, including him. Stillman's dialogue sounds overheard rather than scripted — people talking themselves into positions they half-believe, which is precisely the film's subject. Stream "Metropolitan" online on iFILM.