DR. T AND THE WOMEN (director: Robert Altman; screenwriter: Anne Rapp; cinematographer: Jan Kiesser; editor: Geraldine Peroni; cast: Richard Gere (Dr. T), Helen Hunt (Bree), Farrah Fawcett (Kate), Laura Dern (Peggy), Shelley Long (Carolyn), Tara Reid (Connie), Kate Hudson (Dee Dee), Liv Tyler (Marilyn), Robert Hays (Harlan), Matt Malloy (Bill), Andy Richter (Eli), Lee Grant (Dr. Harper), Janine Turner (Dorothy), Gail Cronauer (Patient ); Runtime: 121; Artisan Entertainment; 2000)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
An amusingly rich and stimulating tale about a successful Dallas-based gynecologist, Dr. T (Gere), who thinks he understands women better than anyone else in town. He has been faithful despite all the temptations around him to his gorgeous wife Kate (Farrah Fawcett). They have two lovely, independent-minded, college-aged daughters, Dee Dee (Kate Hudson) and Connie (Tara Reid), and he has all the family love and material comforts he desires, living an upper-class bourgeois lifestyle. But in Robert Altman's gentle and perceptive comedy, this is not enough. The film becomes a satirical study of the doctor and the upper-crust society folks he comes into contact with. The good doctor will get his needed come-uppance about thinking he knows so much about women, as all the ideals and fantasies he builds around them will come crashing down upon him. Appropriately enough, this is a film set in the fall, and the mood and the color of the film reflects that time of year, in all its beauty and in its surprisingly stormy weather.
The film moves at its own gracefully slow speed, showing the trivial things in Sully Travis' life that make him think like he does, as the charming, handsome, popular doctor, who is as smooth in his bedside conversations as he is when he examines a woman's insides with his speculum, whose waiting room is a maddening cluster of idle chatter and angst from all the female patients waiting to be examined by him, where even his daffy, loyal office manager Carolyn (Long), vies for his undivided attention among all the other woman, as she has a longstanding crush on him.
As an added touch to feminine sensitivity, he has examining rooms named after local female celebrities - Belle Starr, Phyllis George and Gov. Ann Richards.
The gynecologist's philosophical musings about his knowledge of women is given freely to his bird hunting buddies, as he pontificates, "Women are by nature sacred and should be treated as saints."
But Sully's wife has a psychological breakdown, as she dances in the upscale mall water display fountain while nude and is sent by him to a private mental hospital rest home, to be treated by Dr. Harper (Lee Grant). She is baffled by her problem, but surmises it's a rare mythological complex that she suffers from, that affects only upper-class women who are loved too much and come to reject this love, retreating into a childlike state.
Into Sully's life comes an attractive new golf pro teacher at his country club, Bree Davis (Hunt), and the two soon start an affair, with the doctor smugly telling her that every woman is unique. She concurs that if anyone would know, it's him. She is seen as being different than the other women in his life: she's an athlete, wearing casual clothes such as chinos and is not impressed by his acts of gentlemanly chivalry, as she has made up her mind that she wants to have sex with him and he doesn't have to play any games to have her. But the most important difference, is that she's a take charge woman, and this is really a turn on to the already smitten Dr. T.
With his wife's rejection of him, Sully's life begins to dramatically change. His recently divorced, alcoholic sister-in-law, dressed ostentaciously in feathery outfits, Peggy (Laura Dern), comes to stay with him bringing along her three toddler daughters. His conspiracy buff daughter Connie, who is a tour guide, shocks him by telling him that his Dallas Cowboy cheerleader daughter Dee Dee, who will shortly be getting married, had a lesbian affair with the maid of honor Marilyn (Tyler), and shouldn't be getting married because she's still in love with Marilyn.
At last, after many recent bombs, Gere has found a film that goes hand in hand with his laconic style and intelligent grace, as he plays a sympathetic character, someone who seems very comfortable with this dazzling role around so many women and comes across as a good doctor and a generous person who is trying his best to be the Man around a sea of women. There doesn't seem to be much tragedy here, it seems that script writer Anne Rapp and the 75-year-old Altman are only gently chiding the doctor for thinking he can ever understand women, and the film plays more like a big joke on him than anything else. What unravels for him, are all things he can easily rebound from, as the film ends with the song "Ain't It Something The Way Things Go" being played as the credits roll by, after an unpredictable ending to a sweetly bizarre film.
REVIEWED ON 2/21/2001 GRADE: B
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
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