The second film by writer and director Whit Stillman, the male Jane Austen of the nineteen-nineties, is Barcelona. It turned thirty this July. Much like Austen, Stillman is a gentle ironist most loved, and I suspect much misunderstood, by the kind of people at whom he is most likely to poke fun. The sort of sexed-up melodrama one sees in the most popular Austen adaptations–Keira Knightley brought to gasping in a flesh-moistening downpour by the sheer animal magnetism of a furiously arrogant Matthew Macfayden–is reflected in a sort of upside-down and cracked-across mirror in effusive reviews of and friendly conversations about Stillman, which tend to take seriously the asinine and opportunistic theorizing of his characters. Defenses of the bourgeoisie, of text over subtext, of disco, detachable collars, and timeworn clichés, seem the key to the director’s own views, a sort of talky traditionalism.
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