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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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time
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061289
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06128900.040
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1990-09-22
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CINEMA, Page 73Let's MisbehaveBy Richard Corliss
SCENES FROM THE CLASS STRUGGLE IN BEVERLY HILLS
Directed by Paul Bartel; Screenplay by Bruce Wagner
The big machines are parading by -- the Indiana Joneses and
Star Treks and Ghostbusters -- wearing roman numerals like kill
counts on their armor plate. In a steamroller summer, what's a
low-budget comedy to do? Strut as brightly and bawdily as possible.
Anyway, that is the tactic of the new film from Paul Bartel (Eating
Raoul), which intrudes on the monster-movie scene like a kid
blowing a May Day raspberry in Red Square.
There's not much class, but plenty of struggle, at the Lipkin
mansion in Beverly Hills. Oh, sure, the rich know brand names:
Harry Winston's jewels drape each mandarin wrist, and much Steuben
Glass stands about, waiting to be shattered; and at the funeral for
the Lipkins' pet pooch, Michael Feinstein plays piano. But the
Lipkins and the Hepburn-Saravians, their haughty next-door
neighbors, are egalitarians when considering where their next
bedmate should come from. By the end of a weekend in the country,
two elegant matrons will have been seduced by their former
husbands, one of whom is dead. And everybody upstairs will have
slept with everybody downstairs.
Clare (Jacqueline Bisset), a onetime sitcom queen keen for a
comeback, has buried her swinish husband Sidney (Paul Mazursky),
who materializes and pledges his infernal love to her. Clare's
neighbor, Lisabeth (Mary Woronov), has just moved in with her
daughter Zandra (Rebecca Schaeffer) because the exterminators are
at her house, removing every trace of her ex-husband. Now these
women and two others must fend off, or hop on, a platoon of randy
males: Lisabeth's wormy ex (Wallace Shawn); her playwright brother
(Ed Begley Jr.); her invalid prodigy son (Barrett Oliver); and two
manservants, sleazy, pansexual Frank (Ray Sharkey) and Juan, the
sensitive stud (Robert Beltran). "We're from different stratagems
of society," Juan croons to Lisabeth. "But I want to cross over.
Like Ruben Blades."
The crossing of class and sexual borders is the rule in similar
high comedies: Noel Coward's Hay Fever, Jean Renoir's The Rules of
the Game, Ingmar Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night. But those were
about flirtation; director Bartel (who also plays Clare's snooty
diet doctor) wants to talk about performance. Though set in the
right now, Scenes is really a nostalgia piece from the swinging
'70s, when coupling could be a game without emotional consequence
or physical risk.
Scenes is a game too, cunningly constructed, sleekly appointed,
exuberantly performed by a cast that picks up where bad taste
leaves off. This one is not for the kids. Even adults will need
moral shock absorbers; Scenes spits out its wit like a Heathers for
grownups. Its pleasures may seem arid or acid to anyone who
couldn't enjoy, say, a Restoration comedy as it might be played on
Dynasty. But in a season when most movies are remakes of most other
movies, Scenes is an original. And if you are in the right black
mood, you could laugh till your nose bleeds.