Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills

Not an artificial film but a film about artifice, its tensions and sensations, described in the very friendly rivalry between Beltran's wide-eyed houseboy and the chauffeur across the way, a promiscuous and toxically charming snake played by Ray Sharkey (did they know?!) and their bet on bedding their bosses (Woronov and Bisset, pitch-perfect both). Had to add Arnetia Walker & Edith Diaz myself? You racist fucks. Someone needs to write an indignant essay on Blackness in Bartel, lolz

"That's a funny taste..." Crack performances and a terrific script. Hilarious satire. Best. Brunch chatter. Ever. Mary Woronov is an extremely underrated actress. The only movie I know of that uses Debussy's "Dr. Gradus ad parnassum" in the soundtrack.

The high score is cuz of a 3 second shot that rivals the greatest shots in all of film and that's when Wallace Shawn and Ed Begly Jr are strangling each other - an aesthetic orgasm, and speaking of which - EBJ's words of endearment during a let's-make-up belly slap. oh and the cute little dog's sense of smell. I've never been so crushingly fucking jealous of a dog in my entire life. Oh heavenly dog, indeed.

Despite looking a lot like the soaps it's skewering, this black farce actually has some great performances and a sharp script. More snarky camp fun from Bartel.

Quite possibly the most relentlessly insincere movie ever made, which i guess makes sense considering Bruce Wagner also wrote Maps to the Stars (to which this shares a great deal of similarity). That's not to say sarcasm and irony don't have their place, and actually this fares slightly better than Cronenberg's film because Bartel's lighter, sillier (read: camp) sensibility is better suited for this silly, farcical (read: camp) material and thus avoids the overtones of pretension.