Dr T. and the Women
Dir: Robert Altman
Starring Richard Gere & Helen Hunt.
Dr Sullivan Travis, known as Dr T. (Gere), is a gynaecologist, professionally successful and adored by his society-set clients and (entirely female) staff. His success is founded upon his immense respect for women. As he says, no two are alike and all are saints. I.e. he’s a patronising twat. Dr T’s world is thrown upside down when two of the women in his life exhibit strange and disturbing signs of making their own lifestyle decisions. His eldest daughter DeeDee (Kate Hudson) is getting married but at her wedding runs off with a bridesmaid with whom she had a lesbian relationship. If this decision was split-second or premeditated is not clear: if the latter she displays appalling disregard for her fiance’s feelings (but that’s all right because he doesn’t get any lines), her father’s bank balance, wastes the time of hundreds of guests and insults them with her smug and calculatedly confrontational grandstanding. But Dr T. accepts this because he loves his daughter. What a man. It is new golfing instructor Bree Davis (Hunt) who causes him most grief. They become romantically involved but Dr T. is crushed when he discovers that her habits are not exclusive. Just as well that point was made, I wouldn’t have spotted her as capable of independent thought if she wasn’t promiscuous. Also, Dr T’s wife (Farrah Fawcett) becomes mentally unhinged from an excess of loving care, just in case you hadn’t got the idea that patriarchal sexism can come from positive emotions as well as negative.
Dr T. & the Women is an inanely self-satisfied film about superficial people acting in contrived situations to make facile social comment on an issue that was hackneyed 20 years ago. By comparison, The Contender, a current film also dealing with attitudes towards women, is only 10 years out of date and has the decency to use a sledgehammer when it wants to insult your intelligence.
Guy
