Whit Stillman, the writer and director of Metropolitan and Barcelona, the American Eric Rohmer, wry, witty, wistful, somewhat smug observer of the follies and self-deceptions of slim, attractive, educated, talkative young things in their quest for romantic fulfillment, has here outdone himself. More than that, he has outdone Eric Rohmer. At a sweeping glance, little has changed. But that's just to say that this fictional universe, ostensibly the Manhattan club scene and its clientele at the outset of the Eighties, is instantly recognizable as Stillman's and no one else's. Clever, playful, deadpan conversations, in clipped, prissy tones, on an unpredictable array of topics. The end-of-an-era scope of the movie might seem to threaten expansion of the Stillman universe, but through his avoidance of society-column celebrities and his concentration instead on the foot soldiers of the disco scene, the filmmaker keeps things tidy and under control, light and maneuverable. And, in a startling departure from her Troubled Teen past, Chloë Sevigny -- a no-baloney actress, incapable of a false note or an overlarge gesture, gifted with some of the mute eloquence of a Lillian Gish or a Mary Pickford but none of the mute hyperbole -- brings something extra to Stillman's universe, a spark of real life, a touch of naturalness, a tug of creative tension. With Kate Beckinsale, Chris Eigeman, Matt Keeslar, Mackenzie Astin, Robert Sean Leonard. (1998) — Duncan Shepherd
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