Whit Stillman films are Woody Allen films. You
just transpose older urban New York Jews for younger urban New
York prep/deb/Harvard school types. They also toss out the whole
"big notion" premises of death, morality and faith.
Instead, passing fashion, conversational skills, and functional
philosophy are the topics. And since Stillman does fewer films
than Allen, listening to the witticisms of attractive preps as
they contemplate their navels is not so grating, and, in fact,
can be pleasurable (Stillman has done two prior films, to my
knowledge - "Metropolitan" and "Barcelona").
If you've seen the other two, this is a third,
similar in tone, content and style. If you haven't, and you are
patient with slightly ironic, high-brow juvenile blather, to the
tune of 2 hours (and very little else), I highly recommend it.
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