The Company (PG-13, 2003)

In Robert Altman's THE COMPANY, Neve Campbell, a former ballet dancer, stars as Ry, a member of Chicago's Joffrey Ballet. The movie opens with a stunning performance of a ballet called "Tensile Involvement," a postmodern angular variation on a maypole dance (or maybe the ribbons on a toeshoe). The story follows the ballet troupe on and offstage. Ry and the other dancers hold down jobs, deal with personal problems, and battle the limits of the physical world as they try to transcend their own sometimes reluctant bodies as well as the pulls of gravity, and of time. The company director breezily schmoozes and evades with just about everyone, but when he accepts an award he is bracingly honest about the way he was treated as a young boy who loved dance. Ry's non-dancer boyfriend shows that he brings the same kind of care, artistry, and precision to his work that she does to hers.

Form follows content in Robert Altman's The Company. As in the lives of the ballet troupe it portrays, it is the dance that takes center stage. The rest of the characters' lives are glimpsed only around the edges. The result is intimate and moving, with dance numbers that are thrillingly filmed and backstage stories that are quietly observed. This is not about nutcrackers and tutus. This is about people who make the ultimate commitment to art and, especially, it is about the art that they make. Altman is not just showing us dancers here. He is showing us himself.

The off-stage scenes have a loose, documentary feel but they are as meticulously observed and as carefully positioned as a ballerina en pointe. The rehearsal scenes mix art and drama as the choreographers treat the primary dancers the way sculptors treat clay while the back-up dancers "marking" the moves off to the side. One technical point worth noting is that this is the first film to use a new post-production process called Darbee Vision, which adds depth and vivid color to video, and which is ideally suited for photographing the dance numbers, which are, after all, center stage.

Studio: Sony Pictures
Director: Robert Altman
Cast: James Franco, Malcolm McDowell, Neve Campbell
Genre: Drama
Run time: 112 minutes
Theatrical release: December 25, 2003
DVD release: June 1, 2004
MPAA Rating: PG-13
MPAA explanation: brief strong language, some nudity and sexual content