The Treatment

Chris Eigeman, a key actor in the movies of Whit Stillman and Noah Baumbach, finally gets to show his range in this romantic comedy, adapted from Daniel Menaker’s first novel. The tone is set in the opening scene, when Eigeman’s character, who teaches English and coaches basketball at a Manhattan prep school, runs into an ex-girlfriend. “Are you seeing anybody?” she asks. “I mean therapy. Are you seeing a shrink?” In fact he’s engaged in Freudian psychoanalysis with a comically punitive Argentinean (Ian Holm), and when he gets involved with a wealthy widow (Famke Janssen), both the shrink sessions and the movie shift into high gear. John Zorn’s ethnically tinged score is effectively minimalist without succumbing to Philip Glass-style monotony, and Harris Yulin is effective as the hero’s semi-estranged father. Oren Rudavsky directed. 86 min. a Landmark’s Century Centre. –Jonathan Rosenbaum

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