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Exclusive: Vertical has acquired North American and UK & Ireland rights for A New York Story, about a New Yorker torn between the gilded cage of her wealthy uptown life and the bohemian downtown world of a new love interest from outside her social circle.

The romantic drama is the second film from siblings Sophia and Fiona Robert, who work under the banner of The Robert Sisters. They co-wrote the screenplay, with Fiona Robert directing.

Fiona Robert also stars as Annabel, a young woman who risks being ostracized from her insular New York clique, led by her socialite best friend Virginia (Sophia Robert), when she falls for charming photographer Theo, played by Paul Karmiryan (Veronica Mars).

Grappling with the sudden loss of her father, she finds herself torn between the comfortable opulence of her upper crust circle and the vibrant ambitions of the artists downtown.

Other cast members include Annabella Sciorra...

Stars: Edward Clements, Carolyn Farina, Chris Eigeman, Taylor Nichols, Allison Parisi | Written and Directed by Whit Stillman

One might think of Whit Stillman’s minor hit debut as the uptown, Eastside answer to Richard Linklater’s Slacker, which was also released in 1990. Between them they set the template for many a late-century indie: a loose and unfocused narrative peopled by an array of flawed characters discussing life, love, inclusion and exclusion, human existence and God.

The plot ostensibly concerns our sort-of-hero, Tom Townsend (Edward Clements), as he attends a series of preppy parties in various posh apartments in Manhattan. But Tom can’t share a taxi home with the others. He is – gasp! – a “Westsider”, which to a UK audience means he’s not quite as ridiculously wealthy as his friends. This isn’t a late-teen friendship group we normally see on screen. Remember that brilliant tennis club scene in Trading Places?...

Martin Scorsese commands the screen without a single profane word or gunshot to the head. His adaptation of Edith Wharton’s 1920 novel is a marvel for its year, a highly entertaining, dramatically involving epic that takes us to a world lost to time, the high-toned society of New York in the 1870s. For adult viewers, Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer and Winona Ryder form a stunning romantic triangle.

The Age of Innocence

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 913

1993 / Color / 2:40 widescreen / 138 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date March 13, 2018 / 39.95

Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Winona Ryder, Richard E. Grant, Alec McCowen, Geraldine Chaplin, Mary Beth Hurt, Stuart Wilson, Miriam Margolyes, Siàn Phillips, Carolyn Farina, Michael Gough, Alexis Smith, Norman Lloyd, Jonathan Pryce, Robert Sean Leonard, Joanne Woodward.

Cinematography: Michael Ballhaus

Film Editor: Thelma Schoonmaker

Original Music: Elmer Bernstein

Written by Jay Cocks, Martin Scorsese

from the book by: Edith Wharton

Produced by...

When Whit Stillman's "Metropolitan" hit theaters in 1990, it seemed like an overnight success. But the low-budget film about a group of self-proclaimed "urban haute bourgeoisie" in Manhattan hardly had an easy time making it into the world. On the occasion of its 25th anniversary re-release, Indiewire recently spoke to Stillman and cast members Carolyn Farina, Taylor Nichols and Chris Eigeman, who reflected on the challenges -- and joys -- of making the film. Read More: Whit Stillman's 'Metropolitan' to Get 25th Anniversary Re-Release Set "not so long ago" during winter vacation on Manhattan's Upper East Side, "Metropolitan" follows young Ivy League student Tom Townsend (Edward Clements), who falls in with a clique of upper-crust preppies (portrayed by Farina, Nichols, Eigeman, Bryan Leder, Will Kempe, Elizabeth Thompson, Dylan Hundley, Isabel Gillies and Allison Parisi) who attend winter debutante balls. The low-budget film shot in borrowed...

On the 25th anniversary of Whit Stillman's feature debut, Rialto Pictures is sending Metropolitan, featuring Edward Clements, Chris Eigeman, Taylor Nichols, Carolyn Farina and Elizabeth Thompson, out on limited runs in New York, Los Angeles and Maryland. "Few will identify with the ludicrously wealthy characters, who speak in perpetual bon mots and are virtually never seen in anything but formalwear," grants Mike D'Angelo at the Av Club, "but their stubborn refusal to evolve with the culture—forever sounding as if they’re in one of the Jane Austen novels they so earnestly discuss—is part of their charm." We've got the new trailer and we're collecting more reviews. » - David Hudson...

On the 25th anniversary of Whit Stillman's feature debut, Rialto Pictures is sending Metropolitan, featuring Edward Clements, Chris Eigeman, Taylor Nichols, Carolyn Farina and Elizabeth Thompson, out on limited runs in New York, Los Angeles and Maryland. "Few will identify with the ludicrously wealthy characters, who speak in perpetual bon mots and are virtually never seen in anything but formalwear," grants Mike D'Angelo at the Av Club, "but their stubborn refusal to evolve with the culture—forever sounding as if they’re in one of the Jane Austen novels they so earnestly discuss—is part of their charm." We've got the new trailer and we're collecting more reviews. » - David Hudson...

With this past Spring’s release of Damsels In Distress, his first new title in thirteen years, the Criterion Collection has refurbished two Whit Stillman titles this month, including his impressive independent darling from 1990, Metropolitan. An odd-duck anachronism upon its initial release, time has only added a more subdued refinement and fascination to its subject matter, a depiction of a dying culture giving birth to an auteur whose own brand of strangeness may have recently shown itself to be as equally misdated in dealing with the modern youth in today’s world, where the upper class more freely walks amongst its inferior company.

One New York Christmas, not long ago, a group of seven upper class young adults on Christmas vacation are on their way to a deb ball, and it tis the season for a considerable flurry of such high brow events. Several members of the group known as...

Blu-ray Release Date: July 24, 2012

Price: Blu-ray $39.95 each

Studio: Criterion

Chris Eigman is flanked in Metropolitan.

A pair of New York independent filmmaker Whit Stillman’s (Damsels in Distress) sophisticated comedy films from the 1990s, Metropolitan (1990) and The Last Days of Disco (1998), arrive on Blu-ray from Criterion following the label’s previous release of the titles on DVD in 2006 and 2009, respectively.

Acclaimed as one of the great American indies of the 1990s, writer/director Stillman’s Metropolitan is a comedic chronicle of a middle-class young man’s (Edward Clements) romantic misadventures in New York City’s debutante society, where a chatty group of young upper-class Manhattanites are blithely passing through the gala debutante season. Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, the movie co-stars Chris Eigman, Carolyn Farina and Taylor Nichols.

The Blu-ray of Metropolitan contains the following features, all of which were first issued on the DVD (except...

Charlie: Do you know the film, "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoise?" When I first saw that title, I though, "Finally, someone is going to tell the truth about the bourgeoisie." What a disappointment. It would be hard to imagine a less fair or accurate portrait.

Cynthia: Well of course, Bunuel is a surrealist. Despising the bourgeoisie is part of their credo.

Nick: (disgusted) Where do they get off?

Charlie: The truth is the bourgeoisie does have a lot of charm.

Nick: Of course it does, the surrealists were just a bunch of social climbers.

- Whit Stillman, "Metropolitan"

Famously dubbed the “the Wasp Woody Allen” and the “Dickens of people with too much inner life” by reviewers and critics when his comedy-of-manners indie pictures arrived in the early 1990s, Whit Stillman’s ironic, clever and urbane examinations of upward and downward social mobility and the shallow concerns and preoccupations of the young,...