Perfect cast and a good story

I gave this film a 9 out of 10, because it was exactly what I expected it to be.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

If you're a devoted fan of ballet or modern dance, you'll enjoy "The Company." Neve Campbell is Ry, a young ballerina and the focal point of the movie, which is an almost documentary-like portrayal of a professional ballet company preparing for and delivering spectacular dance performances in Chicago. Campbell is a former professional dancer, so she brings authenticity to her performance. However, despite the casting of Malcolm McDowell as an authoritarian, acid-tongued company director to provide a potential source of dramatic conflict with Campbell's character, there's very little story or dialogue in the whole film. Some of the dialogue is so quiet and natural that you can't really make it out. Directed by the great Robert Altman, "The Company" focuses mostly on dance performances and grueling practices, with a few cliches thrown in (the dancers' struggles to win roles, please the choreographer and make ends meet financially). It all looks very realistic and beautiful, and the drama is only in the dance. There's a sweet, slight love story for Ry and her equally hard-working chef beau, played by James Franco. So enjoy "The Company" on a quiet evening, glass of wine in hand, if you love to watch good dance performances, but not if you want dialogue or plot. Still, kudos to Neve Campbell for getting such a tasteful, lovely, non-commercial movie made.

Wouldn't you feel elated by its whimsy and its flimsy? Imagine you and your rendezvous, and some sparkling wine afterwards. It could well be a perfect candidate for a first date on the movies, and I think this is something not outside Altman's sensibility, to his credit.The film is made in a flow of quasi-vignettes, and the perennial demand for plot may make us miss the unadorned details that stitch together the larger loomings: James Franco falling on his face in the bowling, while the dancer cannot restrain from performing after a successful shot, may well exemplify why Neve Campbell is interested in him; or how acceptingly she coils in his - sleeping - arms on a failed New Year's Eve, a bit before the big snake of a dance begins. Or how the fact that in the - a bit sleazy - bar she works, she wears a wig - why, we may wonder? I suppose is out of not wanting to get her hair smelly, which is bizarrely touching.Many a reviewer has mentioned that McDowell may be Altman's stand-in, and his self-criticism. I think that James Franco is more subtly so: Altman makes him quite possibly the most charming of them all, exactly because he echoes his very charming, humane restraint in the dancing matter (remember how almost creepily he sits and stares his love for the first time in the bar, while she plays pool, and the balls, almost self-reflexively, like dancers, roll).The rest is a go-with-the-flow bravura performance. The film ends the way it begun, framed by the night-out-for-the-dance: the huge, awkward, anthropomorphic set with its smoking mouth and scary groan read like a hint on the various cannibalistic tendencies scattered throughout, and strikes a deliciously, sweetly menacing and oddball note with the lovers' injuries.The only restraint I would have towards the film is the sense - sometimes - that Altman plays out his virtuosity with a gala ampleness and a somewhat kitschy comfortableness. But at its best, like in the dancing-in-the-storm scene, which is topped by the double, Bach suite scene, it has the sensible urbanity of an Alex Katz painting.

Robert Altman sets the stage and lets his players do what they do in his films. He's renown as one of the great directors to give actors freedom (he's probably in his own way as meticulous as Stanley Kubrick, only with far less takes), though one wonders if from time to time he does give his direction to an actor or to make sure they know what they're doing. But in his films, like with this Chicago dancing company presented in his 2003 film The Company, the people doing the work need to know what they're doing, and that's the key to getting process, since dance, like film, combines many elements (in terms of dance there's physical movement, there's acting and performance, there's emotion, there's music and lighting, and so on).I imagine that's what drew Altman to the project (it was said it took some consideration before he accepted the job), that and perhaps a connection with the character Malcolm McDowell plays, Mr. Antonelli. He doesn't have much of a ego, but when he needs to (or just wants to) he'll put on airs. While some of the students may roast him eventually- there's a company Christmas party where he's ruthlessly but pleasantly mocked- they always take what he says seriously, since when he speaks one listens, even if it's a rambling speech about what the 1960's were like. He, like Altman, is in control even when he doesn't seem to be doing much. And how the stage is set, as we see, goes a long way for a fantastic dance set-piece, be it with thirty people in crazy costumes or a couple in very sensual poses.The Company has not much plot to speak of- then again, Altman would probably rather get a root canal than worry about a plot- except that it's about a dance/ballet company putting on performances throughout a season, with some minor drama here and there, a small romance between a superstar in the group played by Neve Campbell and a chef played by James Franco (tender scenes but played for real, much like those in Thieves Like Us). But there are a few great scenes (and as Hawks would say, no bad ones), and one of them might be one of my favorite scenes, in terms of intentional (or not) artistic elements coming together, in any Altman film. There's a performance out at night in a park in front of hundreds. The first part goes reasonably well, with thunderstorm sounds in the background. Then Campbell and another dancer take the stage, and as the lovely string music swells, the lightning and thunder as well, and the rain falls and the crowd looks anxious but all the while wrapped up in the completely professional-breathtaking dancing on stage, with little dust and other things flying in the air. It's glorious.How much that was on the spot for Altman, or if it was planned to just shoot in the impending storm (or, perhaps, if it's all just made up for the movie), it's a really wonderful set piece among many others that are more conventionally stage-bound and shot with multiple cameras. The assortment is nice to see (a song from David Lynch's Industrial Symphony #1 even comes up). But it's those little scenes between people, where Altman breaks down artifice (or adds to it seamlessly, like a dance itself) that The Company gains its strength. One of which is the first time Franco and Campbell meet eye to eye at a bar. Watch as Franco sits and watched her play pool. This could go any number of ways from creepy to erotic, but it's more playful and ambiguous than that. We see the aftermath of this scene in a morning-after follow-up, but it's how Altman lets these actors be natural, find their space to look at one another or play pool, that is extraordinary.What The Company lacks in melodramatic tension or a real driving force towards something- the one criticism it could be given, though not a harsh one, is an almost disdain for any continuing conflict- is made up for in a principle need to express what it's like to create something, anything, on stage or on film, that's worth something. It's the work of an old master still looking for ways to create, or observe it being done.

I didn't hate this movie like I thought I would since I am not into dancing. The camera movements ala Robert Altman in his signature always-moving camera style was nice and the flow was nice and I loved Malcom McDowell because most of the film was him ad-libbing (or what seemed like ad-libbing). But what bugged me is certain characters that came to nothing. One young dancer who is broke and ends up sleeping in an apartment where several other dancers have to sleep, and the girl who owns the apartment who is searching for the condom (who is the same actresses who plays the character who hangs out with Chris Penn at the end of SHORT CUTS). Also the character of "Justin", who is fired from the troupe at one point. And a couple dancers who are injured and then passed up. These characters were introduced but nothing came of them. I felt that this movie should have had some competition involved and brought to the forefront. Or something other than beautiful camera angles and Malcom McDowell lecturing people. I mean, I liked those two things about the film and all, but... It just needed some kind of edge. Or perhaps the point was to have no edge at all, and just a smooth, curvy surface. Well, it did have that. It looked fine, but there was little pay-off. And the character development didn't exist at all; except for McDowell's character, who is developed already. But that's just because he is a fine actor, and not in enough films where he can strut his stuff, which he does here... a whole lot. So if you are a McDowell fan, or a fan of Robert Altman's camera movements - and of dancing in general - then this is for you. Just don't expect much else, and you won't be disappointed.