Paul and Mary are a happily married couple living in Hollywood, CA. After Paul gets fired from his job, the two begin to worry about making ends meat and fear their life-long dream of opening a small restaurant is slipping away. In a last ditch effort, the couple decides to put an add out in which Mary poses as a Hooker, luring unexpecting sex-hungry men back to their apartment whereupon Paul kills the client, stealing their valuables and selling the corpse to the night manager at a dog food company. Paul Bartel's Eating Raoul is a perverse, low-key comedic satire which no doubt paved the way for many satires when dealing with sex and violence. In the world of Eating Raoul, pretty much every character outside of our two leads are selfish, perverse individuals only out for themselves and their carnal desires. Satirizing the after effects of the Sexual Revolution, Paul and Mary are the voices of reason who simply see the overabundance of perversion as a way out of their financial woes but when things escalate, these two characters become less innocent, themselves somewhat falling into the perversion of Hollywood. If you can't already tell, Eating Raoul is a pitch-black comedy that is more entertaining then laugh-out-loud funny. It's filmed very similar to an 80's sitcom, with a very low-budget style including tacky production design which adds to the satiric quality while serving the story. While Eating Raoul is entertaining and unique, I found the satirical aspect of the film to be uneven, never really making much of a point. 7/10
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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