Thursday, January 29, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Film: Pas de quoi

Neve Campbell gets on pointe for The Company's otherwise pointless ballet promo

By Anthony Allison

Quite why Robert Altman felt the need, at this late stage in his career, to make a two-hour promotional video for a Chicago ballet troupe is a mystery. But in between gems like The Player and Gosford Park, the uncompromising indie maverick has often made serious missteps, like Dr. T and the Women and Pr�t-�-Porter. So The Company is no real surprise.

Far from an insightful examination of the mysterious creative alchemy that turns choreography into art, Altman's ballet drama offers some mesmerizing snippets of beautifully staged dance action interspersed with backstage scenes that reveal little about the agony and the ecstasy of dancers' lives.

In short, dance fans, don't expect The Red Shoes or Billy Elliot. Neither is this Fame or Flashdance--though Altman would have us believe that ballet dancers are down-to-earth types who enjoy bowling or shooting pool as much as any other working stiff. Whether you buy this "realistic" portrayal of the sweaty reality of life at the barre or sneer at the preciousness of it all is a subjective thing. But somewhere, Nijinsky and his old boss Diaghilev are performing pained pirouettes in their graves.

For celebrity worshippers, the film is of passing interest for revealing that actress Neve Campbell is a trained dancer who managed to get back into good enough shape to play an ensemble member who becomes a principal with the "Joffrey Ballet of Chicago" (played, of course, by members of the real Joffrey troupe). Neve's no Anna Pavlova or Margot Fonteyn. But she can get on pointe and trip a light jeté well enough, at least, to convince non-aficionados.

The star-is-born storyline, devised by Campbell and screenwriter Barbara Turner, sounds like the plot of a million Hollywood musicals. Altman vainly tries avoiding the tired clichés with a free-form structure that flits at random between the performance extracts and off-stage scenes. But though the action gradually builds to a climax of sorts, with the premiere of a new ballet, this lackluster finale is unlikely to get you leaping up to join the standing ovation of the fawning audience on screen.

Apparently aiming to recapture the artfully contrived, seemingly effortless fly-on-the-wall style of his mid-'70s heyday (Nashville, 3 Women, A Wedding) Altman keeps his camera discreetly aloof from the action, peering from the wings, fly tower or out in the audience. But rapidly intercut backstage angles, and audible cues from the stage manager, prove more of a distraction than an instructive peek at the complex inner workings of a ballet production. And off-stage, the actors can't avoid the temptation to mug for the camera.

In particular, Malcolm McDowell, with his flamboyant, Isadora Duncan scarf, hams it up outrageously as the company's capricious artistic director. "It was a wonderful show tonight," gushes this paternalistic egomaniac over the backstage intercom. "And don't forget, practice safe sex. Safe sex, babies."

Campbell, by contrast, is paradoxically low-key almost to the point of invisibility as her character, stumbling through an unsatisfying relationship with a cook (James Franco), and ambivalent about pushing her career, effectively blends, chameleon-like, into the background.

Given the glories of the repertoire, the musical choices, from Bach to Angelo Badalamenti, are surprisingly limited. Altman focuses mainly on Neve's leitmotif, "My Funny Valentine," which plays ad infinitum in various versions, including one accompanying her big number, a pas de deux performed on an open-air stage during a violent thunderstorm. As audience members open their umbrellas, the dancers continue unperturbed, in a bizarre riff on the vaudeville adage that "the show must go on."

Like the rest of the movie, this mildly risible scene isn't disagreeable to watch. But whatever profound point it's trying to make about the dedication of true artists gets hopelessly lost in the overall, messy maelstrom.