The Company Reviews

The beauty of ballet, its peaks and downs in a proffesional company and that's all. Cold and distnat as some altman films. There´s a duo on a set ourdoors during a storm, pretty.

When it was released, this movie generally received some poor reviews but since it was one of the last movies directed by Robert Altman, I was still really eager to check it out. This guy was definitely a master and I really enjoyed the directing on this feature. Indeed, there is no real plot and the whole thing felt almost like a documentary and I thought it worked pretty well. For once, you don't have a huge all-star cast which was a trademark in all Altman's feature at the end of his career but just 3 actors (Neve Campbell, James Franco and Malcolm McDowell) and that was the only issue I really had with this flick. Indeed, even though there are only 3 characters (I'm not even sure whe should count James Franco since he barely did anything and barely had any dialogs), they were all poorly developped. I know it was intentional but, as a result, I didn't care much about those characters. Though I have to say, I really enjoyed Malcolm McDowell who gave a really good performance and it is a real shame that such a talented actor has spent most of the last 3 decades working in some cheap garbage. Neve Campbell was allright and I understand this project was really important fo her because she used to be a ballet danser but, honestly, she was too old or looked too old for the part. To conclude, it is rather flawed but it is still definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in ballet or in Robert Altman's work.