The Laundromat
Beyond Therapy
-
The Laundromat
Directed by Robert Altman.
With Carol Burnett, Amy Madigan, Michael Wright.
US, 1985, digital video, color, 59 min.
Copy source: Robert Altman Collection at the UCLA Film & Television Archive
A fine example of both Altman’s 1980s telefilms adapted from plays and his love of working with actresses, The Laundromat is primarily a long conversation between two women of different ages and from different classes who find themselves thrown together in the setting that gives the film its title. Over the course of a long, rainy laundry night of the soul, they gradually come to confide in each other. In this one-act written by Marsha Norman, Altman successfully cast against type Carol Burnett, one of many popular comedic entertainers—like Lily Tomlin, Henry Gibson and Cher—the director would place in serious roles.
-
Beyond Therapy
Directed by Robert Altman.
US, 1987, digital video, color, 93 min.
Copy source: HFA
Based on the play by Christopher Durang, who has since rejected Altman’s wild co-screenwriting liberties, Beyond Therapy takes the director’s anarchic composition to manic heights. The film opens onto frenetically choreographed action and distracted non sequiturs from an endless array of quirky characters. Within an Eighties therapy culture in full, neurotic bloom, the therapists are indistinguishable from their patients. Jeff Goldblum and Christopher Guest play lovers whose discontent intensifies when Julie Hagerty’s flighty Prudence enters the picture through a personal ad. Set in New York yet filmed in Paris, Altman’s relentless exercise in absurdity is a pastiche of dysfunctional people in a dysfunctional world, with homosexuality—a recurring theme in his Eighties films—distinctly not considered part of that dysfunction.
Part of film series
Screenings from this program
Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson
Vincent & Theo
Fool for Love
Prêt-à-porter
California Split
Thieves Like Us
A Perfect Couple
A Prairie Home Companion
O.C. and Stiggs
That Cold Day in the Park
Corn's-A-Poppin'
McCabe & Mrs. Miller
The Gingerbread Man
Dr. T and the Women
Come Back to the 5 and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean
