Eating Raoul

This movie keeps ending up on my top ten list, no matter how many others come and go with the years. Director Paul Bartel began with a ridiculous premise, and then had everyone play it perfectly straight, which resulted in a comedy that doesn't telegraph its laughs. It's evident that the film was lovingly polished (again) in postproduction, down to the level of tiny incidental sound effects that add immeasurably to the hilarity if you happen to catch them. The story is full of murders, but there's no gore 'n guts here; it's all as discreet as an Agatha Christie novel, where Death is tastefully signaled by a thud from another room. EATING RAOUL is an excellent introduction to the topics of Los Angeles, food, swingers, and real estate loans, and resist as you may, you'll end up cheering for Paul and Mary as they work toward their dream of opening their very own restaurant.

With filmmakers so cynical and despairing today about America, it's refreshing to see a film with so much faith in the American dream. This is a classic tale of rags to riches, of a respectable married couple, down on their financial luck, who, with initiative and a novel idea, manage to fulfil their dream, a hotel in the country. If, to get there, they must pose as bondage merchants, murder their clients, rob their wallets, give the bodies to a petty thief who sells them to dog-food companies as choice meat, than such is the nature of success.

RAOUL declares itself as a true story from the Sodom and Gomorrhah of Hollywood, where fantastic wealth co-exists with degrading poverty. The film is a moral tale, about steering the middle-course, about what it takes to be normal and decent. It plays like straight John Waters, but just as hysterical, even if, eventually, it cannot sustain itself.

The featured couple are called, appropriately, the Blands, and it is significant that their serial-killing weopon is a lethal frying-pan. Paul, played by the director, is the epitome of his name: balding, pedanctic, so obsessed with fine wines that he gets fired from his low-rent off-licence for over-ambition. His wife, Mary, is less bland, which is why she is more easily tempted by the dark side. While Paul remains sweetly virginal, she, a hospital nutritionist, works in an evnironment where she is continually harrassed by lecherous lotharios, and is knowledgeable enough to know that the most humiliating revenge is to have them receive their enema from a burly dandy.

Bartel is a Roger Corman alumnus, and this can be seen in the fluid, economical filming, the functional set-ups that are actually quite complex. The film's very classical structure is at odds with (piecemeal) filming that has characters seem, ineptly, to wander up to the camera, although this has the unsettling effect of making the creepy nonsense seem curiously real.

There is also a hint of suppressed Gothic in the telling - Mary's hysterical normality is so camp she could be Vampira - while the Blands' blandness is under attack from all sides. It's bad enough to have 'swingers' (a charmingly 50s word for perverts that chimes with the Blands' adorably tasteless 50s furniture left them by Mary's mother until she dies) crowding the tenement for sleazy, Warholian, sado-masochistic parties, but to have one of them storm into your apartment, throw up all over your carpet, nearly die in your lavatory, bring your husband to the party to be humiliated/initiated by Doris the Dominatrix, and then come back to violate your wife, is an imposition.

The film makes satirical points enough - the rich and professional classes are all vile, violent sleazes, while the S&M 'sickos' are sweet, loving mothers who live in pleasant suburban avenues so indifferent to capitalist Darwinism that they help out the competition. The racism needed to keep normality normal is shown in the horrifyingly hilarious shooting of a store-robber, or in the final fate of self-confessed 'Chicano' Raoul, which suggest Peter Greenaway might be a fan of the film. The cannibalism theme has a long satirical history in jibes on the bourgeoisie, and it's no surprise to learn that Bartel is a devotee of Bunuel.

But the film's real satire is to show how normality must survive in a society, Hollywood, that has obliterated any recognised sense of reality.

Paul and Mary Bland (Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov) are a VERY goody-goody down to earth couple who want to open a restaurant but they can't get the money. One night Paul kills a man who attacks Mary. They find out he has lots of money. So they decide to put up a sexual ad, lure men into their apartment, kill them and take their money. Then hot hunky Raoul (Robert Beltran) finds out and demands a cut.

I caught this back in 1982 at a theatre. Back then it was a VERY dark and funny comedy. A big hit too. Now, 30 years later, it's still funny but not even remotely as outrageous as it used to be. We've gone beyond this movie in terms of black comedy. Also I found it sometimes too low-key. Still it was enjoyable. Bartel and Woronov are both great in their roles. They were friends in real life and their affection for each other comes through. Also they are hysterical in their roles. Beltran is pretty good too. He's not as good as comedy as Bartel and Woronov but he's young, handsome and hunky and that's what the role calls for. Also Susan Saiger is great in her small role as Doris the dominatrix. This movie is not explicit--the murders are all off screen and there's no blood or gore. So it's funny but not that black anymore. I give it a 7.

One of the greatest comedies ever made (right up there with National Lampoon's Vacation, Caddyshack, Dumb and Dumber, and Clerks) that really makes a strong statement about swingers, s&m, rape, murder, and cannibalism without becoming tasteless. This is Bartel's greatest accomplishment. A major cult hit and deservingly so.

* * * *

Meet the Blands, the aptly named middle-aged square couple. He's a wine expert, she's a nurse, and they need money to finance their dream restaurant. Trouble is, they're barely making ends meet. What's worse, the apartment complex they live in is infested with swingers, back when swingers were as commonplace as yuppies are now. Mary and Paul find the answer to their problems when one of the swingers tries to put the moves on Mary in their apartment. Paul whacks him with a frying pan, killing him, and they discover the fella's carrying a lot of cash. Bingo! Light over heads! What makes this goofy premise work is the absolutely hilarious, dead-on, deadpan performances of Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov as the Blands. They don't give what you'd call comedic performances, but what they say and what they do seems funny, as they are a duo of decorum surrounded by a storm of decadence. Their performances, combined with a witty and biting (pardon the pun) script, make this an absolute delight, a must for lovers of off-beat movies.