Director Whit Stillman sold his Manhattan apartment to raise the budget for this, his debut movie, and then borrowed the apartments of friends to shoot it in. Using a cast of unknowns, it tells the story of a group of young, privileged New Yorkers who call themselves the SFRP (Sally Fowler Rat Pack, named after a party hostess) and do little during the Christmas season other than attending debutante balls, having party postmortems, swapping bons mots and courting each other. It's as though the world of F Scott Fitzgerald has been caught in a time warp, complete with a social interloper (played by Edward Clements). Stillman's witty, sophisticated screenplay was Oscar nominated.

A radical student is adopted by a group of young New Yorkers, serves as a catalyst to alter his and their lives. Gathering in a Manhattan apartment, the group of friends meet to discuss social mobility, Fourier's socialism and play bridge in their cocoon of upper-class society - until they are joined by a man with a critical view of their way of life.