"WHAT seems to be the problem?" the breast-reduction specialist asks 15-year-old Vivian Abramowitz (Natasha Lyonne). "Breasts," she replies. Actually she has a whole roster of answers at her fingertips - namely, the responsibilities of holding together a fractioned, fractious Jewish family that includes her capricious cousin Rita (Marisa Tomei), who escapes from a detox clinic and hitchhikes in the dead of night clad only in a dressing gown; Vivian's smart-aleck older brother Ben (David Krumholtz), who keeps ribbing her for physically maturing, and Murray, their gambling, down-on-his-luck car-salesman of a father (Alan Arkin), who keeps herding the family from apartment to cheap apartment before the next rent is due. In 1976 their current temporary residence is the Casa Bella, yet another dive with a "fancy name" which "promises the good life". The kids are impressed: "Check out the formica!" they marvel, and "Are we bourgeois now?" It's here that Vivian comes across a neighbour she can test her increasingly womanly charms on: a drug-dealing high-school drop out (Kevin Corrigan) who keeps a copy of "Helter Skelter" in the glove boot of his Cadillac. With her footballer knee-socks and long curly blonde hair, Natasha Lyonne is rivetting and charismatic as the self-possessed, New York-inflectioned teenager coping with both her own changes and a dissatisfied parent. And Alan Arkin does a measured comic turn as the divorced father preoccupied with affording his children some security, clinging both to his pride and to a pretence of normality. He exhorts his offspring to "look decent" and wants to keep within the confines of Beverly Hills so they can benefit from good schooling. "Furniture is temporary," he philosophises. "Education is permanent." This semi-autobiographical film, written and directed by Tamara Jenkins, zeroes in well on the instability of the Abramowitz's itinerant existence and Vivian's embarrassment over her unconventional relatives. It gives too much airtime, however, to the "gibberish" language she and Rita have invented (helpfully translated into subtitles) - and at times Vivian's indoctrination into worldly-wise realms is too painstakingly drawn out. But if "Slums Of Beverly Hills" feels adolescent in its focus, this is in large part because its focus is adolescence. Growing pains, platform shoes and Charles Manson T-shirts all loom large. Down to earth and off the wall, this lively portrait of expressive characters down and out in Beverly Hills finds humour in misery, eliding 'quirky' family drama with a coming-of-age comedy of errors.