Eating Raoul, one of the most bizarrely sophisticated movies ever made, is far from ordinary. No, it's not Lubitsch—but it's not quite John Waters either. What director-star-writer Paul Bartel and his chief collaborators serve up is a "comedy of murders" (as Chaplin called his Monsieur Verdoux) that neatly mixes the crisp politesse of the Ealing Studios classic Kind Hearts and Coronets and the savage black humor of The Loved One, with a soupçon (as the title clearly indicates) of Sweeney Todd.
David Ehrenstein
September 26, 2012