AMUMr—
"Beyond Therapy"
Directed by Robert
Altman
Starring Jeff Goldblum,
julie Hagerty and
Christopher Guest
★★★★
“Beyond Therapy” is a
combination of a Woody
Allen movie and a French
sex farce. It’s a funny
movie but the humor is a
bit dated and is so subtle
it’s often missed.
Bruce (Jeff Goldblum)
is a bisexual man ready to
settle down with a
woman, so he places an
ad in the “personals”
column. His ad is
answered by Prudence
(Julie Hagerty) and they
meet in a French
restaurant.
During the dinner,
Bruce admits that he is
bisexual and lives with his
boyfriend. Prudence, a
conservative and
confused woman, is upset
by Bruce’s confession and
his marriage proposal.
She throws her drink in
his face and storms out of
the restaurant.
Prudence and Bruce
are seeing therapists
whose offices are next
door to each other.
Bruce’s therapist,
Charlotte (Glenda
Jackson), is much more
confused than any patient
imaginable. Prudence’s
therapist, Stuart (Tom
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Conti), wants only to
jump on the couch with
his female patients and
failed to impress
Prudence during their
brief affair.
Bruce places another
ad in the paper and uses a
different name. Prudence,
also using a different
name, answers the ad and
they meet at the same
French restaurant. They
get along much better this
time and agree to start
seeing each other.
For“Beyond
Therapy,” director Robert
Altman, whose earlier
films include
“M*A*S*H,” “Nashville,”
“Three Women” and
“Come Back to the Five
and Dime, Jimmy Dean,
Jimmy Dean, ” has taken
Christopher Durang’s
play and made a very
theatrical film. The
choreography and
cinematography are
structured in a such a way
that the film resembles a
play but isn’t limited to a
stage.
Directors of plays
sometimes try to work
actors and set together in
such a way that the
relation between the
actors and the set helps to
tell the story. This
technique, called mise-en-
scene, is used by Altman
to great effect, especially
in the scene with Bruce,
Prudence and Bob in
Bruce’s apartment.
Another of the film’s
strong points is the use of
overlapping dialogue. In
real life, lots of people are
always talking at the same
time but in the movies the
characters usually wait
until everyone else is
finished before they start
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talking. Overlapping
dialogue is a theatrical
technique that wasn’t
used in film until Orson
Welles’ “Citizen Kane.”
No other director since
Welles has used
overlapping dialogue like
Altman.
The cast gives fine
performances, but the
characters are so broad
and bigger-than-life that it
might be distracting to
those viewers who are
used to typical films.
Some of the funniest
moments in the movie are
almost lost because they
are so subtle, and the
characters are anything
but subtle.
About 10 years ago,
psychology and therapy
were trendy among the
“in” crowd. Today the
brand of “couch humor”
set forth on “The Bob
Newhart Show” might
seem a bit old-fashioned
when used in “Beyond
Therapy.”
—Review by Karl
Pallmeyer
gyy
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