If the aim of the Production company was to turn out something verging on the unclassifiable then by and large they have been successful. Withholding information is good: 1) We appear to be in fairly modern times judging by the kind of clothes worn by the characters and cars glimpsed on the streets but only in the last couple of reels does the Cedric Kahn character mention in passing that a character to whom he is speaking was born in 1972 and can anticipate another 40 years of life; the person in question is clearly in the mid thirties ergo the film is set in the present day. 2) again we appear to be in a reasonably large city and despite several outdoor shots there are no recognizable landmarks; eventually, again in the last reel, Cedric Kahn asks a character who had moved away when she came back to Paris, thus telling us where we are (it turns out that the film was shot and is set in a Chinese area of Paris). One could, of course, argue that such is the story it is academic where the story is set and in what time-frame and that may well be true because a time-frame and a location where doctors are not so much doctors as Saints - happy to make house calls 24/7 and taking a personal, humane interests in patients they treat as individuals rather than numbers is something I have not encountered in the modern age. Furthermore the doctors - brothers, who, bizarrely, work in tandem treating even the most mundane illnesses as a duo - are making losses rather than profits and ultimately close the office. One of the brothers is STATED by both himself and others to be an alcoholic but appears to be the picture of health and is never seen with a drink in his hand or with a hangover. The plot, such as it is, has both brothers falling in love with the same woman, the mother of one of their patients. She chooses, for no apparent reason, one of the two, leaves him when her estranged husband returns out of the blue, then comes back to him. Improbable charm seems the best way to summarise this entry.
Review of Miss and the Doctors
