Waking up as a young woman to find that you have breasts is many things at once: it’s disturbing, it’s humiliating, it’s exciting. Burdened with this unavoidable marker of womanhood is a young Natasha Lyonn, starring as Vivian Abromowitz in the opening sequence of Slums Of Beverly Hills (1998), where she finds the unpleasant touch of tailors tape being wrapped around her chest for her first bra fitting. Tamara Jenkins’s semi-autobiographical debut weaves the physical burdens of female adolescence through a story of growing up poor in Beverly Hills, a city widely known for its opulence and prestige.
When we meet Vivian’s father Murray (Alan Arkin) and her two brothers, they’re haphazardly shoving their belongings into bags in the middle of the night, stowing away from their aggravated landlady who hasn’t received their rent. The Abromowitzes are used to up-and-leaving, bouncing around from one shoddy apartment to the next. But Murray refuses to move to a more affordable neighborhood, so that his kids can remain in the 90210 zip code and attend good schools. The film’s plot is largely scattered and the droning on of time feels frustratingly familiar in this genre of family-style comedies from the ‘90s. Most significant is the arrival of the kid’s chaotic cousin Rita (a scene-stealing Marisa Tomei), who escapes rehab whilst pregnant and comes to stay with them. Rita’s father, the breadwinner of the extended family, agrees to pay for an adequate apartment for the five of them (under the pretense that Rita gets her act together and attends nursing school); thus, keeping the family temporarily afloat.
Slums Of Beverly Hills has a distinctly sitcom-esque quality, loaded with skillfully-timed riffs and quips that bury the weight of the hard-hitting subject matter, which goes on to include incest, in addition to depicting the repeated shame that comes from living with such few resources. The film’s most memorable shots are of longing between Natasha Lyonne and the mansions that line Beverly Hills, separated only thinly by the window of her father’s beat-up car. During a 2013 panel interview with the director at 92Y Tribeca, she recalled a similar upbringing: a single father, unwieldy brothers, nomadic living conditions, and a life spent struggling to get her films financed. It’s clear that Vivian’s paradoxical closeness and distance to Beverly Hills is a direct metaphor for Jenkins’s own push-and-pull relationship to Hollywood.
Slums Of Beverly Hills screens this evening, June 4, at Nitehawk Williamsburg on 35mm as part of the series “Misfit Alley.
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