Children are children, whether they’re rich or poor, well-educated or otherwise, and though a regular diet of books often points to a cultivated personality, it is never a surefire sign of genuine depth; especially when, again, you’re only a child, and the issues of serious literature—of life, as it happens—must more often than not be mediated to you through more experienced interpreters.

Whit Stillman’s “Metropolitan” is about a group of people on the cusp of young adulthood, who are mired in the preppie culture of Manhattan circa the late 1980s—though Stillman makes it vague enough to accommodate much of the early-to-mid 20th century, too. They have all gone to the best schools, have read a precocious amount of literature and philosophy, and are the scions of a class one of them coins the “urban haute bourgeoise” (or the “UHB” for short), an extraordinarily privileged slice of the population just enough removed from the highest echelons of the wealthy and powerful to afford them a faint measure of ironic self-awareness regarding their own position on the hierarchy.