by Rich Elias, Sep 10, 1998

Two new movies opening at the Drexel Theater in Bexley get the spotlight this week.

Writer-director Tamara Jenkins' comedy "The Slums of Beverly Hills" drags young Vivian Abramowitz and her two brothers from one cheap apartment to another because her father Murray, a lifelong loser, wants to keep his kids in a good school district. One irony: we never see Vivian in school, nor does she care about it.

She cares more about her body, particularly her breasts. She thinks they're too big. Every boy she meets begs to disagree. But her discomfort with herself and with the nomad's life her family lives is the subject of "Slums." Complicating life is cousin Rita, daughter of Murray's older, richer brother. Rita is a druggie who leaves detox to end up at Murray's, sort of an older sister to Viv in this womanless household.

Every character is a walking collection of quirks, and it's the characters that make this movie fun. The story is from hunger, and even Jenkins gives up on making sense of it halfway through. (It doesn't matter that the movie is part autobiography. That keeps it honest in that Jenkins doesn't impose a lie on her own experience. It doesn't mean that she gives the truth a convincing shape.)

Young Vivian gets the most sympathy. She alone has an inner life. Her swelling body is one challenge. Dealing with Dad is another. And then there's Rita. Trying to corral her cousin is too much for a teenager. Natasha Lyonne gives Vivian a flouncy insouciance, curls flying every which way, staring at a world that doesn't make sense.

Rita (Marisa Tomei) doesn't care if anything makes sense. And Murray (Alan Arkin) is too much of a shyster to know or care. The name stars in this movie suggest that its strength lies in the talent it puts into minor roles, and this is true in even more minor performances. Jessica Walter gets a few good scenes as an older woman interested in Murray as a companion. Carl Reiner and Rita Moreno turn up as Murray's brother and his wife.

Casting and quirky writing keep "Slums" comic. A good dose of vulgar humor helps too. Probably the funniest scene has Lyonne and Tomei in a dance combo involving a device I can't name in print. The scene is in bad taste, yes, but no more so than the hair gel scene in "There's Something About Mary." The difference is that "Slums" uses it to build characters.

A young woman's discomfort with her life is also the subject of "The Governess," starring Minnie Driver as a Jewish girl in Victorian England who becomes a nanny on the Isle of Skye after her father dies bankrupt. It's a scandal for a Jewish girl to have to work in class conscious and money conscious 19th century England. What's worse is that Rosina pretends she's a Christian named Mary Blackchurch to get the job.

Not that Rosina-Mary is complaining. "The Governess" makes us see that this job is her only way out of the fate for newly-impoverished Jewish girls: she would have to marry an old fish merchant. The Isle of Skye looks good in comparison.

The master of the house, located a million miles from nowhere, has enough money to indulge his interests in photography, then a new science prevented from advancing because no one had yet figured out how to preserve a photographic image. Rosina figures it out in a scene which combines her own longings for a Jewish past she has to hide and the needs of modern science.

"The Governess" is visually stunning, each scene composed for the eye. And it makes the most of the brooding landscape of the Scottish Hebrides, where every cloud has a sorry tale to tell. (I've been there. It's all clouds and sheep.) But the movie seems cold and disjointed despite a compelling performance by Minnie Driver. She's not enough to dispel questions. Why, for one, is she Jewish? If she were merely a down-at-heels gentlewoman (like Jane Eyre), the story would have worked the same. Not having money was almost as bad as not having the right religion in Victorian England, maybe worse, if you remember Disraeli.

You keep hearing the buzz words of late 20th century critical thought in your ear as you watch Rosina, as Mary, seduce Mr. Cavendish away from photographing hawk's feathers and dead nature toward live subjects, like herself undraped. The GAZE. To compensate, "The Governess" carefully shows how Rosina's submission to the lens and its master turns into a power ploy. There's a lot of 20th century intellectual baggage in this 19th century scenario. Despite its visual beauty, the movie is more interesting to think about than to watch.