Books, Arts & Manners: A Beaut from LaBute

NO FILM within recent memory has aroused more public and private discussion than In the Company of Men, the 34-year-old Neil LaBute’s first feature. Cheap at a quarter-million dollars, it was (though this doesn’t get mentioned) clearly shot in 16 millimeters and imperfectly blown up: some sequences look rather muddy. Yet even that is turned into a virtue. In the New York Times, Janet Maslin writes, “In retrospect this colored film almost seems to have been in black and white. Its ideas are that stark.” Or its cinematography that poor.

The movie’s main problem is that it doesn’t make sense. Two old school chums, Chad and Howard, work for the same company. Both have woman trouble: Chad’s girlfriend apparently walked out; Howard’s ex-girl importunes his mother on the phone. Chad, a handsome go-getter, proposes to the nerdy Howard joint vengeance on the female sex. They will find a specially vulnerable young woman, romance her for all they are worth, then leave her high and dry. Hesitant, Howard nevertheless agrees.

JS

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John Simon

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NO FILM within recent memory has aroused more public and private discussion than In the Company of Men, the 34-year-old Neil LaBute’s first feature. Cheap at a quarter-million dollars, it was (though this doesn’t get mentioned) clearly shot in 16 millimeters and imperfectly blown up: some sequences look rather muddy. Yet even that is turned into a virtue. In the New York Times, Janet Maslin writes, “In retrospect this colored film almost seems to have been in black and white. Its ideas are that stark.” Or its cinematography that poor.

The movie’s main problem is that it doesn’t make sense. Two old school chums, Chad and Howard, work for the same company. Both have woman trouble: Chad’s girlfriend apparently walked out; Howard’s ex-girl importunes his mother on the phone. Chad, a handsome go-getter, proposes to the nerdy Howard joint vengeance on the female sex. They will find a specially vulnerable young woman, romance her for all they are worth, then leave her high and dry. Hesitant, Howard nevertheless agrees.