FFWD Weekly
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Film by Jaime Frederick Dr. T & the Women could almost be regarded as Robert Altman’s companion piece to another film that recently played in Calgary, Peter Greenaway’s 8 1/2 Women. Although the two films bear few formal similarities, Altman’s movie, like Greenaway’s, is in part about the ways men idealize women. In this case, though, the pedestal is a hospital bed with stirrups, and the women atop it are high society Dallas matrons visiting the office of their beloved obstetrical gynecologist, Dr. Sullivan "Sully" Travers (Richard Gere). On the surface, Dr. T is a man who worships women, and the respect the handsome, silver-haired Southern gentleman affords his patients is repaid with their undying adoration and multiple return visits to his high-priced clinic. Yet for all of Gere’s attempts to play the good doctor with one-dimensional benevolence, Altman also hints that there’s something insidious about him. Now, this isn’t Dead Ringers. Altman’s too gleefully aware of vast comic potential of a male ob-gyn to make a film as horrifying as Cronenberg’s classic gynecological creep-out. Still, there are subtle hints early in the movie that Dr. T’s attitudes toward women are oversimplified and skewed by his professional decorum. His aloofness with his wife and daughters, and the self-assured aura of demystification he affects when discussing all things feminine with his male hunting buddies attest to his shortcomings in relating to women as individuals. Beefcake Gere is ideal for this part – his natural obliviousness and arrogance are the perfect complement to the sly machinations of the dozens of women who surround him. In this regard, Altman has assembled a huge ensemble featuring numerous iconic female faces from cinema and television in a variety of roles that challenge stereotypical representations of women. There are cheerleaders and alcoholic aunts, hysterical naïfs and self-assured golf pros, kooky conspiracy theorists and lesbian lovers, back-biting bridesmaids and one unlikely bride. As Altman’s narrative goes madly off in all directions, elaborating on the complex comic matrix connecting all these women, it’s the cast that holds the whole crazy mess together with exceptional performances from Helen Hunt, Farrah Fawcett, Laura Dern, Shelley Long and Liv Tyler. The central conflict in the film is that for all Dr. T’s pretensions, he still doesn’t understand women the way he believes he does. Right off the top, the institutionalization of his wife (Fawcett) pitches his stable world into chaos, and it’s not clear whether he will ever recover his equilibrium until a deus ex machina nearly sweeps him off the screen two hours later. The intervening diversion is an enjoyably detailed romp through a world of women we rarely see, and one thing is certain – we aren’t in Kansas City anymore, Toto.

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