'Slums' comically portrays teen foibles, breasts

The '70s are embarrassing. Bad hair is embarrassing. Halter tops and cousins on drugs are embarrassing. Families that sneak out of seedy apartments at daybreak are embarrassing. And breasts are most embarrassing of all.

COURTESY YORK SQUARE CINEMA Not exactly 'American Gothic.'

That just about sums up Tamara Jenkins's The Slums of Beverly Hills, a movie that can be hard to watch without wincing. Protagonist Vivian Abramowitz (Natasha Lyonne), 14 and already--as her father puts it--"stacked," moves from one sleazy apartment building to the next with her loud-mouthed brothers and a father who has gambled away his savings. At 65, patriarch Murray (Alan Arkin), who relies on his older brother Mickey (Carl Reiner) for cash, is the kind of guy who would sneak out of Sizzler without paying the check. Yet he clings desperately to his Beverly Hills zipcode, the only one source of pride he has left.

The Abramowitzes may live on the outskirts of the city, in run-down buildings with names like "Bella Casa," but they're within city limits no less--a move to the cheaper suburbs is out of the question. When family funds run particularly dry, Murray offers to keep tabs on his drug-addicted niece, Rita (Marisa Tomei), in exchange for a financial bailout from Mickey. Rita manages to be even more unhinged than the rest of the Abramowitzes, and Vivian ends up as her reluctant baby-sitter. All this while deflecting her brothers' breast jokes, defending her father from Mickey's withering critiques, and alternately romancing the pot dealer next door (Kevin Corrigan) and Rita's vibrator. As if puberty weren't weird enough already.

Chronicles of adolescence and its accompanying parade of indignities are nothing new. If you watched There's Something About Mary this summer, you saw Ben Stiller's pimply-faced character get stuck in his zipper on the night of his senior prom. But it's unusual and refreshing to find a film that specializes in female troubles. Vivian buys a bra, bleaches her mustache, and worries about her period. It's like a celluloid version of Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret, but funnier.

The movie manages to tackle young female sexuality without turning itself into a Lolita or Stealing Beauty. For Vivian, large breasts create more anxiety than they do arousal, and the movie's sex scenes are more awkward than erotic. Vivian herself has got too much wise-cracking world weariness to pass for a tender ingenue. She keeps her drug-peddling boyfriend at arm's length--as she tells him, after a feel-up session in the laundry room, "It's just a building thing."

Director Jenkins is merciless with her actors. One chubby fellow, filmed from the least flattering angle imaginable, sings an off-key "Luck Be a Lady" in his underwear; Vivian gets to lip-sync with her vibrator. Luckily, they rise to the challenge, creating the most convincing dysfunctional family portrait I have ever seen. Tomei, looking scrawnier than ever, makes a terrific Rita. Whether she's prancing around the kitchen half-naked or cajoling Vivian into giving her a urine sample that she can pass off as her own, she's got a shaky, manic intensity that keeps your eyes glued to the screen. Lyonne, last seen narrating Woody Allen's Everyone Says I Love You, imbues Vivian with scrappy energy. As the movie's sole voice of sanity, she wins the audience's admiration--and sympathy. Best of all is Arkin, whose portrayal of the broken-down, humiliated Murray, a Willie Loman in a leisure suit, is hilarious and deeply touching.

Faced with his own failure, Murray struggles for the respect of his children, who are too caught up in free love and cheap weed to pay attention. He tells tall tales and makes excuses to cover up his irresponsibilities, even as his weaknesses as a parent and a person become obvious. Similarly, Vivian, whose burgeoning body becomes a topic of family conversation, fights shamefacedly to keep private that which is already common knowledge.

Puberty and poverty are both public, humiliating, hard to control, and hard to escape. When Vivian takes violent revenge on Mickey, who has humiliated Murray in a crowded restaurant, she is also asserting her own need for dignity and privacy. At the movie's end, the Abramowitzes are still the same disreputable bunch, but Vivian has discovered a sympathetic bond with her father. She is ultimately able to embrace her motley family, warts and all, and treasure the nomadic lifestyle that sets them apart. In the movie's final scene, as she suggests a trip to Sizzler after another early morning eviction, Vivian seems to have made the transition from puberty to maturity: she may be frizzy-haired and homeless, in bellbottoms and an oversize bra, but she refuses to let it embarrass her.

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• The official site for The Slums of Beverly Hills