Beyond Therapy (USA-France, 1987) 93 min color DIR: Robert Altman. PROD: Steven Haft. SCR: Robert Altman, based on the play by Christopher Durang. MUSIC: Gabriel Yared. DOP: Pierre Mignot. CAST: Julie Hagerty, Jeff Goldblum, Glenda Jackson, Tom Conti, Christopher Guest. (New World Pictures)
After Robert Altman fell out of favour with Hollywood, he spent much of the 1980s adapting stage works for the screen. People detested this romantic comedy when it came out, but I liked it when I saw it years ago on one of those Pay TV “free weekend” previews, and again after scoring a VHS copy at BMV for a whopping $2.49 (a sad fate for a lot of lesser-known Altman movies, actually) I still think it’s well worth a look: even second-tier Altman is better than most things.
Though written as early as 1981, Christopher Durang’s play emerges as a timely satire of 80s hang-ups around some befuddled Anglophones in Paris. Jeff Goldblum (with tight curls, trendy stubble and white pastels, looking like he just came from a Kenny G concert) is a bisexual who has a blind restaurant date with Julie Hagerty (typically neurotic) which of course turns to shambles. They each confide their troubles to their psychotherapists (Glenda Jackson, Tom Conti, respectively) whose offices are two rooms apart from each other. The room adjoining their offices is reserved for when the two doctors get so turned on by their patients’ stories that they meet in the middle for some hot and heavy sex. The fact that these strangers are nonetheless coincidentally linked by their copulating psychotherapists is not some contrived convenience– as always, Altman makes a mockery of such contrivance– instead, in the big small world of Robert Altman, points like these become Shakespearean dramatic irony.
As with any Altman film, there is enough subplot for a few movies– one of the few threads also concerns Goldblum’s jealous boyfriend (an over-the-top, flamboyant Christopher Guest) which to some may seem politically incorrect or stereotypical, however Guest’s character is strangely moving. I was never a big fan of Julie Hagerty (Airplane; Lost in America), but this may the best showcase for her wispy neuroticism. All of this “romantic comedy” culminates in a big dinner at the central restaurant with one weird dream sequence. As always, in Altmania, the result matters less than the experiment.
Originally printed in Vol. #1, Issue #9.
Greg Woods
Greg Woods has been a film enthusiast since his teens, and began his writing "career" at the same time- prolific in capsule reviews of everything he had watched, first on index cards, then those hardcover dollar store black journals, then an old Mac IIsi. He founded The Eclectic Screening Room in 2001, as a portal to share his film love with the world, and find some like-minded enthusiasts along the way. In addition to having worked in the film industry for over two decades, he has been a co-programmer of films at Trash Palace, and a programmer/co-founder of the Toronto Film Noir Syndicate. He has also written for Broken Pencil, CU-Confidential, Micro-Film, and is currently working on his first novel. His secret desire is for someone to interview him for a podcast or a DVD extra.