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In his new picture, which is about a Chicago ballet company based on — and featuring members of — the Joffrey, Robert Altman pushes the narrative into the corner and focuses on the dancing. The Company is about Altman’s own responses to dance, which he shoots from every possible angle, enshrining it, abstracting it. Every ballet (there are eight, including one each by Lar Lubovitch and Robert Desrosiers, who appear as themselves) is given a different visual style. Altman breaks the Fred Astaire rule — always shoot a dancer in medium shot so you can see the whole body — but so did Bob Fosse, and Altman’s often daring camera set-ups and editing are so organic that he seems to be inside each of the pieces. In 75 years of movie musicals, it’s possible that no one has ever shot dance so sensuously or made it look so exquisite. (Andrew Dunn did the breathtaking cinematography.) The high point among high points is Lubovitch’s setting of "My Funny Valentine," which is performed al fresco during a rainstorm by the National Ballet of Canada–trained Neve Campbell (who plays the main character, an upcoming young ballerina named Ry) and Domingo Rubio. The Rodgers & Hart tune is the movie’s anthem; Altman returns to it again and again, in a variety of different arrangements (including the Chet Baker and Elvis Costello versions), the way he did with the title song in The Long Goodbye. Among other things, it’s the theme for Ry’s romance with Josh (the effortlessly likable James Franco). Malcolm McDowell turns in a very funny performance as the company’s narcissistic artistic director. (112 minutes)
BY STEVE VINEBERG
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