"Eating Raoul" is not a lacerating black comedy or satire, nor does it try to go over-the-top firing on all cylinders at its targets. There is quite a bit of charm to it despite its potentially disturbing subject matter and its almost demure flatness is itself part of the joke. And it is a great funny joke that exploits its premise to no end at a cool and inventively hilarious 83 minutes.
What happens when a liquor store clerk and his shapely nurse of a wife run a swingers newspaper ad and confront all sorts of male chauvinist creeps? Well, they hit each one of them on the head with a frying pan, that's what. Paul Bartel is Paul Bland and Mary Woronov is Mary Bland, and their interest in swinging with any sexual fantasy welcomed by the client is initiated because they need money to buy a restaurant. Paul and Mary sleep in separate beds because they do not engage in sex! Mary is consistently sexually harassed at work and when she applies for a loan. When it comes to the sexual swinging, the men are aggressive as well and Paul and Mary think nothing of murdering their wealthy clients and taking their money. An orgy is attended by the matter-of-factly couple and let's say they make a killing.
A professional thief who is also a smooth locksmith, Raoul (a delightfully suave performance by Robert Beltran), is on to the couple and wants to assist in these murders as long as he gets a percentage of the profits. When Paul gets wind that Raoul is pleasuring Mary thanks to smoking a Thai stick, he asks for help from a dominatrix (Susan Saiger) who doubles as an INS agent, a nurse and a blind nun just to get Raoul out of the way. It almost works and these scenes made me double over with laughter.
I avoided "Eating Raoul" for years because I thought it was some sort of cannibalistic comedy and cannibalism is a subject I can do without (regardless of my perverse love for "The Silence of the Lambs"). Truth is it is anything but (though there is a feast involving eating raw meat though it is so understated that you can't possibly be offended by it). "Eating Rauol" turns out to be one of the most raucous, perfectly straight love stories you might see involving a murdering couple. Paul and Mary are not exactly amoral - they just see this killing spree as another way of making money without any regard to the consequences or the humanity of their clients (many of them are creeps and attack and attempt to rape Mary without any prior knowledge that they are to be killed by frying pan!) To the Blands, it is all fun and games that is justified as long as they attain their capitalist goal of owning a restaurant serving Bland food. Their happiness extends to that American dream and their love for each other than runs deeper than anyone thinks. Watching Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov discuss their future and their expenditures while corpses are being dragged out of their apartment in trash bags kept me laughing throughout. It is absurdist and so uniquely clever and engaging that I can't imagine seeing it less than twice.
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