SCENES FROM THE CLASS STRUGGLE IN BEVERLY HILLS
With Jacqueline Bisset, Mary Woronov, Ray Sharkey, Robert Beltran, Ed Begley Jr., Arnetia Walker, Wallace Shawn, and Bartel.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
At first glance, discretion is not a characteristic one would quickly associate with the director of Private Parts, Death Race 2000, or Cannonball, but the awkwardness of personal expression runs alongside the more sensational motifs in these over-the-top sex-and-violence extravaganzas. While Private Parts may be the last word on voyeurism, it is also the story of a quiet, polite young woman caught up in a maelstrom of self-actualizing fantasists. The car races of both Death Race 2000 and Cannonball are run by contestants who see the stakes as justifications of styles broadened into eccentricities, with the loutish and loquacious always losing to the tastefully tacit.
Of course, these aren’t mannequins but people, and people in unusual variety. Bartel has assembled one of the largest casts of characters in recent memory. First comes Clare Lipkin (Jacqueline Bisset), a recently widowed ex-sitcom star bent on a television comeback. Clare plays host to her next-door neighbor, Lisabeth Hepburn-Saravian (Mary Woronov), who is having her house fumigated, mainly to remove the last traces of her philandering husband. Lisabeth brings along her unsuccessful playwright brother, Peter Hepburn (Ed Begley Jr.), and his new bride, To-bel (Arnetia Walker), a black woman he met and married in Las Vegas. Lisabeth’s pubescent son Willie (Barret Oliver) and Clare’s emphatically post-pubescent daughter Zandra (the late Rebecca Schaeffer) round the families out.
Sometimes Bartel’s characters–notably Juan and Lisabeth–have the opportunity to completely change, to realize that their restrictions are self-imposed and that they can summon the courage to move beyond them. Some, however, such as Howard Sa-ravian, never get the chance; though, for only a moment, the veil is lifted and we get a glimpse of his humanity.
