Two USA indie coming-of-age comedies starring Natasha Lyonne, the archetypal misfit gal of the late ‘90s, both are feature debuts of two female filmmakers, which have gained their respective cult status as time elapses.

Tamara Jenkins’ SLUMS OF BEVERLY HILLS brings audience back to Beverly Hills in the ‘70s, sans glitter and glamor. Awacky family of four, Murray Abromowitz (Arkin), an unprosperous automobile salesman and his three children Ben (Krumholtz), Vivian (Lyonne) and Rickey (Marienthal), subsists on a nomad-like existence, moving from one cheap apartment to other, beholden to the financial support from Murray’s wealthy elder brother Mickey (Reiner).

Their living condition improves when Mickey’s daughter Rita (Tomei) escapes from a rehab facility and stays with the family, under the pretext of Rita attending a nursing school, the family secures more subsidies from Mickey. But Rita is a loose cannon, a 15-year-old Vivian cannot keep her in check, plus she has her own teen angst to deal with, like the nascent uncomfortableness towards her growing breasts and the anxiety/curiosity of losing her virginity to Eliot (Corrigan), a 20-something lad wearing a Charlie Manson T-shirt.

For what it is worth, SLUMS… is unabashed of being defined by its feminine fulcrum, you can find a gallimaufry of bras, bare breasts, vibrator, menstrual belt and secret pregnancy cropping up amusingly down the road, but Jenkins doesn’t belittle them by ridicule, they are important in a girl or woman’s life, and how many times a film can regard them without sexualizing them? Again, it is of high import to put a woman in the rein to subvert the decades-long tired male’s prospective, and SLUMS… sets a fabulous example here.

The pig Latin between Tomei and Lyonne is a juvenile delight, also suggests a special bond between their characters. Tomei is a gas for her unstrained expressiveness, Rita is a wreck, but Tomei builds her kookiness upon her innate kindness, so she becomes a fuller person you can relate to. Arkin, inching to his usual curmudgeon persona, is both aggressively funny (the fork-stabbing anecdote) and exasperatingly unreconstructed (often assumed by others as the children’s grandfather because of his age, Murray’s wounded ego needs to be reassured that he is still in his prime), Murray is all carapaces and spikes, the only time he betrays his weakness, the shock is legitimate.

Then there is a frizzed Lyonne, acting fairly beyond Vivian’s age, she is a puzzled teenager, but also has an assertiveness in her that makes Vivian the one who actually has her feet in the ground, she is the one who unites the family together.

However, in Jamie Babbit’s BUT I’M A CHEERLEADER, released one year later, her hair is straightened and Lyonne stupendously injects a veneer of naivety to play an all-American, 17-year-old cheerleader Megan Bloomfield, who is suspected by her parents and friends as a latent lesbian (the tell-tale signs are difficult to argue), so she is sent to a conversion therapy camp called “True Directions” to cure her homosexuality, but what happens there is a delectable sexuality awakening experience. Why girls and boys sleep separately in the camp? One might think the very first precaution is to stem any occasion for same-sex sexual attraction, right?

Truly, Babbit’s enormously funny satire has more leanings in lampooning the heteronormative insularity and the society’s benighted mindset of judging by stereotypes than in laying it on thick to fight against homophobia. Rounding up a miscellany of sexually ambiguous prototypes (Jewish, Asian, Hispanic, Black, jock, sissy, goth and tomboy, Babbit has a bent for diversity way earlier than it becomes a norm), the story meanders through the therapy’s five-step program, under the clutches of Mary Brown (Moriarty, the throaty-voiced schoolmarm in shocking pink) and her assistant, the ex-gay Mike (the one and only RuPaul, obliviously ogling the fine specimen of Eddie Cibrian), and its garish confection of pink and blue (denoting the gender dichotomy) is a pre-Candy Crush doozy. Just like Jenkins, Babbit’s feminine disposition calls the shot here, and we are all grateful to that.

Megan’s romance with Graham (DuVall, who is out and totally in her elements with brio and finesse) also inverts the typical butch/femme ideas, although the movie is too candy-coated to have anything to jeopardize the happy ending, but the promulgation of PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) is the most sensible message from this unconditionally queer oddity, it even makes any number of John Waters’ movies erring on the side of virility.

Although both Jenkins and Babbit been keeping working in the business, but the potentiality manifested through their debuts fail to secure a prolific career for both of them, Jenkin hitherto has only 3 features under her belt (THE SAVAGES, 2007 is a masterpiece deconstructing the sibling rivalry), and Babbit’s filmmaking activity tails off after four pictures, and now makes high-quality comedies in the television department. For those who bemoans the paucity of mainstream female filmmakers in Hollywood, it is not for want of talent, but thanks to opportunities snuffed by sexism, and lastly, a shoutout to Lyonne, for her affinity and support with budding women directors, something now every major Hollywood star should practice instead of merely serving lip service.

referential entries: Jenkins’ THE SAVAGES (2007, 8.1/10); John Waters’ POLYESTER (1981, 6.6/10); Miranda July’s Kajillionaire (2020, 7.3/10).

Title: Slums of Beverly Hills

Year: 1998

Genre: Comedy, Drama

Country: USA

Language: English

Director/Screenwriter: Tamara Jenkins

Music: Rolfe Kent

Cinematography: Tom Richmond

Editing: Pamela Martin

Cast:

Natasha Lyonne

Alan Arkin

Kevin Corrigan

Marisa Tomei

Jessica Walter

David Krumholtz

Eli Marienthal

Carl Reiner

Rita Moreno

Mena Suvari

Jay Patterson

Rating: 6.6/10

Title: But I'm a Cheerleader

Year: 1999

Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance

Country: USA

Language: English

Director: Jamie Babbit

Screenwriters: Jamie Babbit, Brian Peterson

Music: Pat Irwin

Cinematography: Jules Labarthe

Editing: Cecily Rhett

Cast:

Natasha Lyonne

Clea DuVall

Cathy Moriarty

RuPaul

Melanie Lynskey

Katharine Towne

Joel Michaely

Katrina Phillips

Douglas Spain

Dante Basco

Kip Pardue

Eddie Cibrian

Bud Cort

Mink Stole

Wesley Mann

Richard Moll

Brandt Wille

Michelle Williams

Julie Delpy

Ione Skye

Rating: 7.1/10