MOVIE REVIEW : Risque ‘Class Struggle’ Not Risky Enough

Paul Bartel’s “Scenes From the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills” (selected theaters) should have the wide-eyed wickedness that seems to seep right through the films of Pedro Almodovar. It’s almost as bizarro: a farce turning on the pan-sexual lust of a collection of high- and low-rent characters in and around the manicured hills of Beverly.

They include a sitcom queen (Jacqueline Bisset), just widowed; her next-door neighbor (Mary Woronov), only recently divorced; the housemen of both women (Robert Beltran and Ray Sharkey, respectively), who’ve only recently entered into a large cash bet over which one can score with the other’s lady of the house first. And there are auxiliary characters enough to populate the senior class high school play--a showy role for everyone, including the dog.

But although Bruce Wagner’s script has individually hilarious characters, such as Bisset’s housekeeper (Edith Diaz), in hourly communion with Aztec gods of revenge, and Bartel has gotten one really delectable performance (Arnetia Walker’s as To-bel) and a lovely rapport between his above-stairs mistresses and their below-stairs manservants, “Class Struggle” just can’t keep from hugging itself at its own naughtiness. And self-congratulation is the sworn enemy of good raunchy fun, making it arch and pert instead of zinging in there, somewhere well below the belt.

Be assured there is a lot in this sex farce to upset the cautious, beginning with its scalding language and moving briskly to the action, which turns on the commingling of the Bisset and Woronov households while Woronov’s house is being fumigated. The easily offended will be (the film’s R rating is for language and sexual situations), or Bartel/Wagner have missed their calling.

Bartel has one lovely moment, as piano music played by Woronov’s lonely, sickly teen-age son (Barret Oliver) rises like a warm breeze, traveling up through the house, visibly affecting everyone who hears it. If the sexual roundelays of the household could move as effortlessly, the movie would be a bawdy delight.

In a few actors’ hands it almost does. Bisset, glowingly beautiful, uses the light comic edge she displayed in “High Season” to lovely advantage, and Sharkey’s preternaturally assured hustler takes no prisoners.

But the most consistent tone is hit by Walker’s cheeky To-bel, a pneumatic actress with a few roles in her past that don’t seem to be listed on her resume. Resigned to being mistaken for Diahann Carroll, Leslie Uggams or Cecily Tyson, To-bel has impulsively married Ed Begley Jr., Woronov’s brother and one of the worst playwrights ever, judging by the bits of scenes we hear from his past and future plays.

Walker has the knack of seeming to be doing something decorous, then splatting out into lasciviousness without pushing the moment or losing the energy behind it. The visual equivalent of a low-down dirty trumpet, Walker, also the voice on the soundtrack song, is magnificent.

But the film needs to move to a level of surprise that goes beyond saucy language and tired sociological put-downs. It needs lightning speed and scorching assurance, not herky-jerky smugness and an oddly timorous suburban air. There’s the hint that Bartel can do it; he just has to risk everything and plunge in unafraid, without first testing the water with his toe, or looking around to see if everyone is watching.

‘SCENES FROM THE CLASS STRUGGLE IN BEVERLY HILLS’

A Cinecom Entertainment Group release of a North Street Films production. Producer Jim C. Katz. Executive producers Amir J. Malin, Ira Deutchman. Director Paul Bartel. Screenplay Bruce Wagner, from a story by Wagner, Bartel. Camera Steven Fierberg. Editor Alan Toomayan. Music Stanley Myers. Production design Alex Tavoularis. Art direction Bob Kensinger. Costumes Dona Granata. Sound Trevor Black. With Jacqueline Bisset, Ray Sharkey, Robert Beltran, Mary Woronov, Ed Begley Jr., Wallace Shawn, Arnetia Walker, Barret Oliver, Edith Diaz, Paul Bartel, Paul Mazursky, Rebecca Schaeffer. Running time: 1 hour, 42 minutes.

MPAA-rated: R (under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian).

“The Class Struggle in Beverly Hills” opens today at the Balboa Cinema, 709 E. Balboa Blvd., Newport Beach , (714) 675-3570; the Edwards Crown Valley, 26862 Crown Valley Parkway, Mission Viejo , (714) 364-0120, and the AMC MainPlace Six in the MainPlace/Santa Ana Mall , (714) 972-8500.