Luxus, Sex und Lotterleben

This movie is outrageous, funny, ribald, sophisticated & hits the bullseye where 99 % of Hollywood movies don't even make the target. Paul Bartel should be recognized as one of the great directors of this or any era. He's the American Renoir & Bunuel _ combined!!! Glad I have the videodisc.

Great title; and in its day Bruce Wagner's extravagantly purple dialogue made a lot of eyes widen. In his fiction, Wagner scales astonishing heights of cruelty and scabrousness, but writing a SHAMPOO-style rondo, he seems miscast; it's as if Terry Southern had ambitions of being Ernst Lubitsch. There are savory performances generously sprinkled: Paul Mazursky is the wistful shade of a TV producer, brought by lust back to this mortal coil, and Wallace Shawn makes a sumptuous entrance, flanked by two LAPD officers, telling his hostess, "These perverse gentlemen have made a slanderous assertion."

Pre-Voyager Robert Beltran and the the often-maligned Mary Woronov are the real stars of this show about the meaning of love and honor among those who know little of either.

While that sounds really dull and serious, keep in mind that this is one of the "sideways" comedies of Paul Bartel, the man who brought us "Eating Raoul," and starring the usual Bartel suspects.

The script is funny, all parts are fully fleshed, these are real people...not anyone I'd want to know personally, for the most part.

Often laugh out loud funny play on sex, family, and the classes in Beverly Hills milks more laughs out of the zip code than it's seen since the days of Granny and Jed Clampett. Plot centers on two chauffers who've bet on which one of them can bed his employer (both single or soon to be single ladies, quite sexy -- Bisset and Woronov) first. If Manuel wins, his friend will pay off his debt to a violent asian street gang -- if he loses, he must play bottom man to his friend!

Lots of raunchy dialogue, fairly sick physical humour, etc. But a lot of the comedy is just beneath the surface. Bartel is memorable as a very sensual oder member of the family who ends up taking his sexy, teenaged niece on a year long "missionary trip" to Africa.

Hilarious fun.

Scenes From A Class Struggle in Beverly Hills is probably the classiest film on Paul Bartel's resume, but don't let that deter you. The script is just as uproarious and irreverent as many of his other films, but it has a professional gloss that many of his other films don't have.

It stars Jaqueline Bisset as Clare, a washed up former sitcom star whose husband has just died from autoerotic strangulation, leaving her feeling like she needs to make a big change in her life. Everything boils over during a fateful weekend at her mansion where her friends and family expose their own failings, kinks, and desires.

With a colorful cast including Ed Begley, Jr, Wallace Shawn, Mary Woronov, Robert Beltran, Ray Sharkey, and Bartel himself, it's hard not to enjoy this film. Each character has their moment to shine and a few funny bits to land. If there's any flaw, it's that the film feels a little overlong in places.