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Directed by Robert Altman
Written by Anne Rapp
Starring Richard Gere, Helen Hunt, Shelley Long, Laura Dern, Farrah Fawcett, Kate Hudson, Tara Reid, Liv Tyler
USA, 2000
Rated R (graphic nudity, some sexuality and language)
LADIES AND GENTLEMAN
Pretty women at their mirrors, in their gardens, on committees, telephoning, window-shopping, table-hopping/Pretty women giving parties, never stopping, gossip-swapping, capsule-popping…
- Stephen Sondheim, “Pretty Women”
Some have accused Robert Altman’s latest film of misogyny, and in a way, the film’s detractors are right. All the female characters are either head-over-heels in love with the titular protagonist, rich and popular Texan gynecologist Dr. Sullivan Travis (Richard Gere in a noteworthy performance), or they’re crazy. On the other hand, Dr. T and the Women is also about adoring and worshipping women. It’s a delightfully naughty panorama of wealthy, nagging, sexy, dim-witted, stubborn, talkative, intelligent, but ultimately wonderful ladies. Then again, the film often only shows women as sexual beings without a brain in their head; they all wait eagerly for their pap smear from the alluring Dr. T with their fur coats and haughty attitudes.
The film’s plot is actually quite rich, touching on a bunch of various nuances and issues of gender and sexuality, and Robert Altman uses the witty Anne Rapp screenplay brilliantly, staging wonderful details of these pretty women who drink great wine and live in luxurious Dallas mansions. Dr. T’s wife (Farrah Fawcett, who performs rather commendably in her small role) lapses into some sort of syndrome suffered only by upper-class women who cannot help but want imperfection in their flawless lives and thus revert back to childishness. She ends up stripping and dancing naked in a mall fountain. T then meets the new golf pro at his country club, Bree (Helen Hunt), the first ostentatiously independent woman to appear in the movie. He asks her out for dinner, and his advances are hardly sexual since Bree is portrayed as masculine, and so the audience is made to assume Sullivan comes to see her more as friend than sex object. She invites him to her place and pushes his masculine buttons by refusing to let him cook the steak or pour the wine, and then she practically seduces him by strutting upstairs, nonverbally forcing him to decide whether to leave or to stay. When he decides to stay, she undresses and they make whoopee.
We are meant to see Dr. T as a man of dignity and fairness who loves his wife dearly. Altman, Rapp, and Richard Gere convince us he is in the first act, and we enjoy his tenderness and care with his patients and family. That’s why his affair with Bree is offensive; it is treated so calmly, and he never shows a hint of remorse. After the two have sex, we’re still supposed to believe Sullivan Travis is a man who respects women. This subplot proves the most problematic. The film’s real possible sexism lies in Altman and Rapp’s casual willingness to forgive Dr. T’s adultery. Because the women in the cast far outnumber the men, the message seems to be that males, by nature, must have multiple lovers, while “normal” females are satisfied by loving only one man. Dr. T is in love with an ocean of women, while the majority of the ladies in the cast are in love with only him. Masculinity in the film is characterized by the enjoyment of hunting, chivalry, and directness, and femininity is characterized by the enjoyment of shopping, ditziness, and chattiness. So, the film’s version of the Independent Woman is a lady who knows what she wants, unlike “regular” women. Helen Hunt, usually a fantastic actress who exudes a sophisticated but down-to-earth friendliness and breeziness, is not allowed to be warm and funny and exuberant here. Her role is “manly”; women aren’t supposed to turn down marriage proposals because they don’t want to be taken care of, but Bree does. The film constantly accentuates the difference between men and women, or masculinity and femininity, even going so far as to put the names of the female actors in pink in the opening credits and the names of the male actors in blue.
But Dr. T and the Women transcends what may be gender pigeonholing by making us believe it is Dr. T who buys into these stereotypes, not Altman or Rapp. By the film’s exaggerated ending, our hero’s love of women becomes stormy confusion. His wife has just asked for a divorce, his loyal receptionist has quit her job, his daughter has run off with her lesbian lover (Liv Tyler) on her wedding day, and the woman he (thinks he) needs doesn’t seem to need him back. All his Southern gentleman notions of marriage, the Fairer Sex, and heterosexuality have been tied in knots after the existence of divorce, the Independent Female, and homosexuality disturbs his world. (The film often seems like a call for the revitalization of the married, heterosexual lifestyle. A number of the female characters do not respond to love from a man either because materialism has supposedly made them nutcases, or they dare to be happy staying single. Dr. T is frustrated with “modern” lifestyles; the wacky ending finds him in a primitive Mexican village helping a mother give birth to a baby boy.)
In the midst of all this chaos, Richard Gere proves to be more than suitable for becoming the lens through which we see Dallas women and their problems. Gere has one of the most extraordinary faces of the male actors working today. Like Cary Grant, he seems to get increasingly handsome as the years go by. He has pleading puppy-dog eyes, and his face is structured like a young Gregory Peck’s. So, even if we can’t completely believe his character is as remarkable a man as he thinks he is after he hops into bed with Bree, Gere’s face is an image of classic, levelheaded suavity and Boy Scout goodness. It’s not hard to believe Dr. T has more than a little bit of niceness inside him. Gere never seems to be trying too hard here; his performance is like clockwork, without ever being noticeably inventive.
This movie is far more engaging than last year’s Altman and Rapp collaboration, Cookie’s Fortune, probably because it’s about a type of eccentricity that is familiar to most Americans. The latter film was about kooks in the South, and it focused on regional kookiness. The jokes worked usually, but the comedy was distant. Dr. T and the Women also features Southern kooks, but it’s focused on upper-class/gender-related kookiness and regional values. The film is also made more directly affecting by an excellent Lyle Lovett score and the more familiar personalities in the cast, and fewer ordinary faces. The marvelous women turn in some highly appealing performances, especially Laura Dern, Shelley Long, Kate Hudson (who utilizes that special something she had in Almost Famous and gives it a tasty snobbery), and the underused Lee Grant. Several scenes have Richard Gere surrounded by these prima donnas. The vixens who sit in the gynecologist’s waiting room, most of them apparently wanting only to be poked and prodded by this attractive man (some women object to the idea that anyone could find pleasure in a pap smear), are basically the customers of someone who has unintentionally become a high society gigolo. But this is not just any gigolo, but one who listens and comforts and believes that women are “saints.”
Despite his almost satirical portrayal of his idle rich female characters, Robert Altman is obviously very much in love with these women. His films treat eccentricities as if they were basic human nature. Dr. T and the Women may be politically incorrect (some may interpret it as boiling down to no more than a huge, disgusting orgy in which the satisfied male actually believes it’s all just true love), but, at its core, it’s about the remaining mystery of why women love men and, particularly, why men love women. The mystery itself is politically incorrect in that it doesn’t and cannot follow the laws of politeness.
By Andrew Chan [OCTOBER 29, 2000]
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