Eating Raoul

Paul and Mary Bland want to open their own restaurant in Los Angeles and cannot raise the money. After killing a man by accident and taking the cash from his wallet, they find their method: place an advertisement and invite wealthy perverts to the apartment. Then a locksmith named Raoul gets involved. Paul Bartel directed, wrote with Richard Blackburn and plays Paul. Mary Woronov plays Mary, Robert Beltran plays Raoul. The production was entirely independent. Bartel shot it in pieces as money appeared; the process took over a year and he used his own savings. The humour is cold and indifferent: the killings are handled like kitchen work and the characters never feel guilt. Its target is the contradiction between the sexual liberation talk of the seventies and the petit bourgeois dreams of the middle class. It became a cult item in America and is cited as an example of eighties independent filmmaking. Who it is for: viewers who like black humour and independent cult film. Who it is not for: anyone expecting refined satire; the film chooses crudeness deliberately.