Más allá de la terapia

Comedy is hard. BEYOND THERAPY is, arguably, Christopher Durang's best play and Robert Altman's worst film. The casting of the film is not terrible -- on paper. But almost every other aspect of the film -- the direction, the look, the sound -- is wrong-headed, -hearted, and every other relevant organ-ed. Still, going on the principle that an artist should be judged by his best work, not his worst, enough about Altman. Even Homer nodded and I don't mean Homer Simpson, but, come to think of it --. Durang's comedy remains incisive and hilarious. From the perspective of 2004 it seems so embedded in its era that it effortlessly transcends its time -- like Restoration Comedy on a good night. This is nigh-on-impossible to see in the film, but it is happily evident in an audio recording made in 2002, featuring a splendid cast of gen-u-ine comic actors, headed by Catherine O'Hara, David Hyde Pierce, Kate MacGregor, and Richard Kind. It's "pure '80s." It's the "me decade" pressed down and flowing over. The peculiar idiocies of idiotic therapists are skewered on Durang's pen as are personal ads, grotesque drama (Eck! Eck! EQUUS!), let-it-all-hang-out personal interaction, and wildly "inappropriate" therapist/patient relationships. It is laugh-out-loud wonderful on CD and may serve to comfort the Durang and Altman fans who are justifiably horrified at the film.

Maybe Robert Altman needed the change of pace, or maybe it was just because he was in his momentary slump before hitting his stride again with Tanner 88 and Vincent & Theo, but Beyond Therapy is a bewildering effort of farcical cinema. He takes a play by Christopher Durang and 'Altman-izes' it, I suppose. There's the over-lapping dialog, the neurotic personalities, the quirky-cum-insane humor, and the characters that float in and out of scenes like they're on a mixture of whimsy and mescaline. He also gives some good actors some things to do and funny things to say - sometimes too self-conscious to be funny at all, and sometimes so bizarre that it becomes amusing just to see how far it will go. I couldn't say I didn't enjoy watching it all the time, but it would also be unfair to say it's a complete failure. It's just a damn odd duck of a movie.

It concerns patients and therapists, the patients including blind-daters Bruce and Prudence (Goldblum and Haggerty), and their own problems with one another- Bruce is bi-sexual, or bi-curious, or just adventurous, and Prudence is frigid and a little on edge, all the time- and their therapists and people they know. There's not a whole lot of variety in how the scenes play out: there's arguments, there's talking, there's bedroom farce, behavior tics, and a story resolution that kind of folds back into itself just when it looks to get interesting. Some of the dialog, whether by Durang or Altman or both, can be funny at times, or just with the way a character will react to something (the premature ejaculation material from one of the therapists is funny - at least at first until the joke becomes tired), and some of it just... stinks.

The actors do try, or at least they try to. It's hard not to like Jeff Goldblum and Christopher Guest, and in some of the scenes it's equally fun and painful to see them in this material. Glenda Jackson fares better, or just has her own tune to play, when playing the therapist who hates gays and goes through a letter ala dictionary-style to find a word to say. But some of the acting is just weird, and not in a good way. Julie Haggerty doesn't deliver anything to make the movie entertaining (frankly I never knew she did anything outside of Airplane! and Midnight Summer's Sex Comedy, and now I remember why), and what must have been some tighter scenes of sex-farce or screwball comedy on stage have been dissected by Altman, and not successfully. Some of the director's touches kind of work, though barely, like the constant cutaways to a bald dude in the restaurant (Michael Berryman's brother, no?) and the slow-motion shoot-out climax becomes impressive just to see how long Altman can maintain it.

But a lot of this is just ridiculous and stupid and insipid as psycho-sex comedy. Woody Allen could have fared better- or perhaps has fared better- with similar material, and would have, in fact, told a better story. Altman is so fascinated by his warped characters that it's all that's there, warped characters. And if we can't care about any of them, ultimately, even in the scope of crazy satire, why care at all?

What the Hell was that? I'm normally an Altman defender in all cases - I'm a fan of stuff like That Cold Day in the Park, Quintet and Pret-a-Porter - and I've never seen him as a hit-or-miss director who has directed half masterpieces and half flops, as his reputation tends to go. But this is truly a disaster! It's based on a stage play by Christopher Durang, who also adapted this screenplay with Altman. I just can't imagine anyone sitting in the audience watching this garbage thinking, "Oh, man, that would make a great movie!" unless the play was significantly different on stage. I kind of doubt it, though. It has such a peculiar energy, and it's not much like anything else Altman made. It feels like something pretentious people might have enjoyed on stage, more likely in the 60s than in the 80s, because it's just so odd. I'm usually a fan of odd, but this one almost made me violently angry at times. Jeff Goldblum stars as a bisexual man living with his boyfriend (Christopher Guest), but trying to branch out into women. He meets Julie Hagerty on a blind date, and they immediately hate each other. After therapy sessions and a second blind date (they both change their ads slightly but end up together again), they hit it off, much to Guest's chagrin. Every character in the movie is constantly going to their therapist (the two therapist characters are played by Glenda Jackson and Tom Conti). No one acts like a human being in this film, just weird simulacra making faces at each other. There's hardly a laugh in it, and the actors universally embarrass themselves. Better off completely forgotten.

"Beyond Therapy", much like Brian De Palma's "Bonfire Of The Vanities" which I also watched recently, was a huge critical and commercial flop by a top-rank American director, a few years before their careers took an upward turn. And also like "Bonfire", it is not a film without interest. It is an extremely eccentric "romantic comedy": from the first frame to the last, there is not one "normal" character or scene in the movie. It does not succeed (the slow-motion shootout parody sequence misses badly), but it's certainly an original (I liked the occasional random sound effects of car crashes somewhere in the background), and Julie "Airplane" Hagerty still has her special brand of kooky charm. **1/2 out of 4.

Whoever thought of bringing Christopher Durang and Robert Altman together has never mixed oil with water. Never have two artists been more obviously mismatched. Altman creates dark little moody set pieces, and moves at his own leisurely (and idiosyncratic) pace; Durang's fast little funny script practically begs for a crackling speed-thru, and this movie goes on forever. Still, if you're not familiar with Durang or if you can watch this without any preconceived notions, there are some very funny moments, and Christopher Guest, as always, is priceless.