Director Whit Stillman and ‘Metropolitan’ Come to Sag Harbor Cinema

Whit Stillman, the writer-director of the “Doomed. Bourgeois. In Love.” trilogy will join Sag Harbor Cinema on Thursday, January 2, at 6 p.m. for a screening and Q&A of his 1990 debut feature (and cult classic) “Metropolitan” alongside the film’s editor, Sag Harbor resident Christopher Tellefsen (“Moneyball,” “A Quiet Place,” “The People vs. Larry Flynt,” “The Menu”).

Stillman, who in addition to “Metropolitan,” wrote and directed the films “The Last Days of Disco” and “Barcelona,” remains one of the quintessential 1990s independent filmmakers. Most recently, the filmmaker wrote and directed “Damsels in Distress” (2011), starring a young Greta Gerwig) and “Love & Friendship” (2016), starring Kate Beckinsale and Chloë Sevigny, adapted from Jane Austen’s “Lady Susan,” as well as the TV series “The Cosmopolitans” (2014) for Amazon Studios.

“It is a tribute to Whit Stillman’s observant eye, his flawless directing style and the humanity he finds in his characters that all his films seem to carry within a very special evergreen quality,” said the cinema’s artistic director Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan. “‘Metropolitan’ is as fresh and surprising as it was 30-plus years ago. And a perfect film for the holidays.”

“Metropolitan” chronicles a young man’s adventures with affluent Park Avenue teenagers over one Christmas vacation. Stillman’s witty, semi-autobiographical screenplay received an Academy Award nomination and an Independent Spirit Award win for its highly observant — and exceedingly hilarious — commentary on Manhattan debutante society.

Stillman’s “Metropolitan” characters — a collection of melancholic, bourgeois teenagers who are highly-privileged, acutely anxious and overly-educated (which makes for rich dialogue full of literary references and incredibly clever prattling) — inspired decades of irreverent stories about the East Coast Elite.

“I had a group that was friendly and funny, charming and silly, and likable, too, so I based the film a bit on this group,” Stillman told BOMB Magazine in 2015. “The characteristics they had in 1969 they still have when I meet them today. Judgmental Jane is still judgmental — and not talking to me.”

Tickets for the screening are available at the box office or sagharborcinema.org. Sag Harbor Cinema is at 90 Main Street in Sag Harbor.