Here’s
one I’ve been putting off writing for
weeks. Jesus, what a mess. I actually
had to get up and walk around between
that sentence and this one.
DR.
T AND THE WOMEN is the story of Dr. Sullivan
Travis (Gere), OB-GYN to the Junior League
and courtly protector of women. As the
title suggests, he deals with many women.
There’s his daughter, Connie (Reid), a
Dealey Plaza tour guide and JFK assassination
theorist. There’s his soon-to-be-wed daughter
Dee Dee (Hudson), a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader
alternate and one very special bridesmaid
(Tyler). There’s his soon-to-be-divorced,
dipsomaniacal sister-in-law (Dern) and
her three young daughters. There’s the
loyal head nurse (Long) who dreams of
the day when he will turn to her as a
man turns to a woman. There’s a clamorous
waiting room filled with women, including
a hypochondriacal patient who’s married
to one of his hunting buddies (Turner).
And then there’s his wife (Fawcett), who
snaps her cap in the movie’s opening minutes.
She and the golf pro with whom he has
an affair (Hunt) are the only undemanding
women in his life.
DR.
T AND THE WOMEN is a knife in the tanned,
defoliated back of Dallas womanhood. Now
personally, I’ve always thought this model
of womanhood deserves a bit of roughing
up, so I’m not grieved on account of how
badly such women come off in this movie.
(Many years ago, I read an article in,
I think, Ms. Magazine about a Dallas
socialite whose Valentine’s Day present
to her big-bidness hubby was to shave
her pubic hair into the shape of a heart
and dye it pink. She’s the archetype here;
she was probably one of Dr. T’s patients.)
I’m
grieved on account of how badly women
in general come off, because I don’t get
any sense that writer Rapp particularly
meant to skewer a segment of society.
Scenes of clamoring women, and there are
several, bring to mind nothing so much
as the "Pick a little, talk a little,
cheep, cheep, cheep" number from
THE MUSIC MAN, where gossiping matrons
gathered on the corner are compared to
a flock of biddies. These society-page
women are portrayed as the very ones Joseph
Cotten talked about in SHADOW OF A DOUBT—"…silly
women, eating the money, drinking the
money, wearing the money…"—his fingers
clenching reflexively . . . But that’s
a much. much better movie. I digress.
There’s
clear evidence that Rapp can write well.
COOKIE’S FORTUNE was a nice, offbeat story.
And there are some wonderfully true lines
in DR. T. At one point, Gere offers to
take care of Hunt so that she’ll never
have to work or worry again. "Why
would I want that?" she asks him,
gently puzzled. For me this was the crux
of Dr. T’s character: Women are driving
him out of his natural mind, but he can’t
stop taking care of them and just care
for them.
Though
the ensemble film is Altman’s signature,
here he gets lousy performances from almost
everyone involved (but the best Gere performance
I’ve seen in a while). Even Lyle Lovett’s
original music comes up short. No one
affiliated with this production gets away
unscathed. Plus, there’s a stupid, out-of-left-field
meteorological occurrence (not as freakish
as MAGNOLIA, but not as believable either)
that just destroyed any goodwill I had
left for this movie.
A
pointless waste of everyone’s time and
money, though those who hanker to see
Farrah Fawcett naked may beg to differ.
—
Roxanne Bogucka — an Action Grrl!
out of 5
