The Company (film)

Last updated
The Company
Companymovieposter.jpg
Theatrical release poster
Directed by Robert Altman
Screenplay by Barbara Turner
Story byBarbara Turner
Neve Campbell
Produced byRobert Altman
Joshua Astrachan
Neve Campbell
Pamela Koffler
David Levy
Christine Vachon
StarringNeve Campbell
Malcolm McDowell
James Franco
Cinematography Andrew Dunn
Edited by Geraldine Peroni
Music by Van Dyke Parks
Distributed by Sony Pictures Classics
Release date
  • December 26, 2003 (2003-12-26)
Running time
112 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$15 million [1]
Box office$6.4 million [1]

The Company is a 2003 American drama film directed by Robert Altman with a screenplay by Barbara Turner from a story by Turner and star and co-producer Neve Campbell. The film also stars Malcolm McDowell and James Franco, and is set in the company of the Joffrey Ballet.

Contents

Plot

Without focusing on a single main character, the film depicts a season of rehearsals and performances at the Joffrey Ballet. Its artistic director is the warm yet demanding former dancer Alberto Antonelli, who steadily guides the company through the rigors of training, injuries, scheduling challenges, financial difficulties, and conflicts between dancers and choreographers. As the film begins, Antonelli has his eye on a talented dancer, Loretta 'Ry' Ryan, and chooses to grant her more and more prominent roles within the Ballet's performances in spite of her lack of cohesion with some of its members (one dancer requests to be removed from a number after his relationship with Ry ends acrimoniously).

Like many of the company's less senior members, Ry needs to work a second job. Against her mother's protests, she waitresses at a trendy bar. Ry meets Josh Williams, a young chef whose slowly ascending position in a restaurant's kitchen mirrors her own journey to stardom. The two begin a happy relationship after Josh sees Ry seductively playing pool to Elvis Costello's recording of "My Funny Valentine," a song which recurs throughout the movie.

One of the central threads of the film is the Joffrey Ballet's preparations to stage a new work by Robert Desrosiers based on Hindu mythology. (The performance depicted is Blue Snake, which Desrosiers had actually choreographed in 1989 with the National Ballet of Canada). Antonelli and Desrosiers quickly pick Ry to be the featured female dancer in the work after she impresses them by dancing Lar Lubovitch's My Funny Valentine outside during a thunderstorm. The work proves difficult to stage, with another dancer suffering a career-ending injury to her Achilles tendon in rehearsals; its demands also strain Ry's personal life, at one point causing her to miss a complicated dinner made for her by Josh. In between the preparations for Blue Snake, the company stages and rehearses many other pieces, including a dance on a swing set to Julee Cruise's "The World Spins." To release tension, many of the dancers host an impromptu "roast night" dance on Christmas Eve, in which Antonelli and Desrosiers' personalities are lampooned.

Blue Snake eventually premieres at the Kennedy Center. During the performance, Ry injures her arm at the end of a solo section, forcing Desrosiers to improvise until another dancer can be fitted into her elaborate costume. The work is still a resounding success. Josh, who has been similarly injured in a kitchen accident, sneaks onto the stage during bows to congratulate Ry. They celebrate as the main curtain descends.

Cast

The part of Alberto Antonelli was reportedly inspired by the real life dancer and choreographer Gerald Arpino. [2]

Production

Development

The Company was an idea of Campbell's for a long time—she began her career as a ballet dancer, having been a student at Canada's National Ballet School. [3] Altman was initially reluctant to direct the film, reportedly remarking, "Barbara, I read your script and I don't get it. I don't understand. I don't know what it is. I'm just the wrong guy for this." [2] The director eventually relented, and The Company turned out to be his penultimate film. Neve Campbell and James Franco prepared for their roles as restaurant workers by training under Mickaël Blais, the chef of Marche, an upscale bistro in Chicago. [4] [5]

Dance lighting

Dance lighting for the Joffrey Ballet portions was composed by the dance lighting designer Kevin Dreyer.

Pieces in the film

Excerpts of the following dance pieces are included in the film:

Reception

Box office

The Company was given a limited release on December 25, 2003, earning $93,776 in eleven theaters over its opening weekend. The film ultimately grossed $2,283,914 in North America and $4,117,776 in foreign markets, bringing its worldwide box office total to $6,401,690—well below its estimated $15 million budget. [1]

Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes the film has a 71% rating based on reviews from 134 critics. The site's consensus states: "Its deliberately unfocused narrative may frustrate some viewers, but The Company finds Altman gracefully applying his distinctive eye to the world of dance." [9] On Metacritic it has a score of 73% based on reviews from 32 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". [10]

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times praised the film, awarding it 3+12 stars out of four. [2] Ed Gonzalez of Slant Magazine similarly declared it the best movie of 2003. [11] Elvis Mitchell of The New York Times called the film "enjoyably lithe and droll" and attributed a "great deal of the film's appeal" to McDowell's performance, while opining that the film "doesn't stick with you as a whole." [12]

Related Research Articles

Lar Lubovitch Dance Company is a dance company based in New York City and founded by Lar Lubovitch in the late 1960s. They have performed at Carnegie Hall, and worldwide.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lar Lubovitch</span> American choreographer (born 1943)

Lar Lubovitch is an American choreographer. He founded his own dance company, the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company in 1968. Based in New York City, the company has performed in all 50 American states as well as in more than 30 countries. As of 2005, he had choreographed more than 100 dances for the company. In addition to the company, Lubovitch has also done creative work in ballet, ice-skating venues, and musical theater, notably Into the Woods. He has played a key role in raising funds to fight AIDS.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joffrey Ballet</span> Ballet company (founded in 1956)

The Joffrey Ballet is an American dance company and training institution in Chicago, Illinois. The Joffrey regularly performs classical and contemporary ballets during its annual performance season at the Civic Opera House, including its annual presentation of The Nutcracker.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Joffrey</span> American ballet dancer and choreographer

Robert Joffrey was an American dancer, teacher, producer, choreographer, and co-founder of the Joffrey Ballet, known for his highly imaginative modern ballets. He was born Anver Bey Abdullah Jaffa Khan in Seattle, Washington to a Pashtun father from Afghanistan and a mother from Italy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oregon Ballet Theatre</span> Ballet company in Portland, Oregon, United States

Oregon Ballet Theatre (OBT) is a ballet company in Portland, Oregon, United States. The company performs an annual five-program season at the Portland Center for the Performing Arts and conducts regional and national tours. It was featured in the October/November 2007 issue of Pointe magazine, with principal dancer Kathi Martuza on the cover.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gerald Arpino</span> American dancer and choreographer (1923–2008)

Gerald Arpino was an American dancer and choreographer. He was co-founder of the Joffrey Ballet and succeeded Robert Joffrey as its artistic director in 1988.

<i>The Red Shoes</i> (musical) 1993 Broadway production

The Red Shoes is a musical with a book by Marsha Norman, lyrics by Norman and Bob Merrill and music by Jule Styne. Based on Powell and Pressburger's 1948 film, it tells the tale of a young ballerina who performs in an adaptation of the 1845 Hans Christian Andersen story.

Rasta Kuzma Ramacandra was born on July 18, 1981 in San Francisco and is a dancer, martial artist, gymnast, and choreographer. Thomas is the founder of the Bad Boys of Dance and director/owner of the ShowBiz National Talent Competition. Thomas is a past winner of prestigious ballet competitions worldwide and has been a guest with numerous dance companies.

Aspen Santa Fe Ballet (ASFB) is a multi-faceted arts organization that nurtures and manifests the love of dance across a spectrum of programs for the cultural enrichment of Aspen, Colorado, and Santa Fe, New Mexico—and beyond.

Patrick Corbin, is an American dancer and founder of CorbinDances.

Tina LeBlanc is an American ballet dancer, teacher and ballet master. She joined the Joffrey Ballet in 1988. In 1992, she joined the San Francisco Ballet as a principal dancer. She retired in 2009, then joined the faculty of the San Francisco Ballet School, before returning to the San Francisco Ballet as a ballet master in 2019.

The Harkness Ballet (1964–1975) was a New ballet company named after its founder Rebekah Harkness. Harkness inherited her husband's fortune in Standard Oil holdings, and was a dance lover. Harkness funded Joffrey Ballet, but when they refused to rename the company in her honour, she withdrew funding and hired most of the Joffrey dancers for her new company. Joffrey Ballet later moved to Chicago, and continues to function.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ann Marie DeAngelo</span>

Ann Marie DeAngelo is an American choreographer, director, producer, teacher, consultant and former dancer - an expert in all areas of dance. She was leading ballerina with the Joffrey Ballet, where early on she was pegged by Time magazine as "one of America's most outstanding ballerinas" and where she later served as associate director at the time of the company's move to Chicago in 1995.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joshua Astrachan</span> American film producer

Joshua Astrachan is an American film producer and principal at Animal Kingdom, the production company he co-founded in 2012. He lives and works in New York City.

The New York International Ballet Competition (NYIBC), was a program providing dance education and employment opportunities for young dancers ages 17 to 24. In 1983 Ilona Copen founded NYIBC, with Igor Youskevitch as first artistic director, in order to fill a void and satisfy a need in the global dance ecosystem. Other international ballet competitions existed, but New York City, considered a dance capital of the world, did not have its own.

Kevin Dreyer is an American lighting designer of dance, theatre, opera and film, Full professor of Theatre at the University of Notre Dame and resident lighting designer for the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival. Dreyer is also a dance lighting reconstructor for the works of Gerald Arpino, Moses Pendleton and Kurt Jooss.

Robert Guy Desrosiers is a Canadian dancer, choreographer, and actor. After a brief dance career, he founded the Desrosiers Dance Theatre and choreographed surreal and theatrical dances. After the company’s disbandment, he pursued a variety of artistic professions before returning as a freelance choreographer.

Maia Wilkins is an American ballerina. She was a principal dancer for the Joffrey Ballet from 1991 until 2008. She was the principal of Sacramento Ballet School and is currently the Associate Director of Ballet at Northern California Dance Conservatory. She used to teach ballet and re-stages Joffrey and Arpino works for the Arpino Foundation.

Fabrice Calmels is a French ballet dancer and model who performed as a lead dancer with the Joffrey Ballet in Chicago, Illinois.

Brunilda Ruiz was a Puerto Rican ballet dancer, teacher, and choreographer. She toured internationally as a founding member of the Joffrey Ballet and Harkness Ballet companies.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "The Company". Box Office Mojo . Retrieved April 15, 2016.
  2. 1 2 3 Ebert, Roger (December 24, 2003). "The Company". Chicago Sun-Times . Retrieved April 15, 2016.
  3. Murray, Rebecca. "Neve Campbell Interview - The Company Movie" . Retrieved January 27, 2007.
  4. About Mickaël Blais
  5. Molly Woulfe for NWI Times, November 22, 2002 Pirate flicks still shiver his timbers
  6. 1 2 3 Leland Windreich for Ballet-Dance Magazine, January 2004 'The Company': Fleeting Events in a Dancer's World
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Mary Ellen Hunt for Ballet-Dance Magazine, January, 2004 'The Company': Altman's take on the Joffrey is artsy, not artistic
  8. Office credits for The Company
  9. "The Company (2003)". Rotten Tomatoes . Retrieved April 1, 2021.
  10. "The Company". Metacritic .
  11. Gonzalez, Ed (December 14, 2003). "The 10 Best Films of 2003". Slant Magazine . Retrieved April 15, 2016.
  12. Mitchell, Elvis (December 25, 2003). "Behind Smooth Footwork, Some Abrasive Gossip". The New York Times . Retrieved April 15, 2016.