"In The Company Of Men" (18) Screen at D'Olier Street, Dublin
Making an auspicious and adventurous film debut, the writer-director Neil Labute pulls no punches in his abrasive and thoroughly unsettling contemporary drama, In The Company Of Men, an American independent production which took a prize at Sundance last year. Its title could hardly be more apt for this provocative picture, which zeroes in on certain male anxieties in the aftermath of feminist advances and affirmative action policies.
It centres on two white male corporate executives in their late twenties who are bitterly frustrated at being passed over for promotion at work and at being dropped by the women in their lives. "We're a doomed race," declares the more aggressive of the two, the confident, good-looking and hard-nosed Chad (played by Aaron Eckhart), an arrogant and amoral character whose capacity for spiteful behaviour is revealed to be limitless.
"Let's hurt somebody," he suggests, proposing a sadistic scheme to his more outwardly insecure colleague, Howard (Matt Molloy), whereby they will take "therapeutic" revenge on women in general by subjecting one woman to humiliation. On an out-of-town company trip for six weeks, Chad chooses a vulnerable victim in Christine (Stacey Edwards), a hearing-and-speech-impaired secretary, and the plan is that each man will have an affair with her and then cruelly drop her at the end of the six weeks.
The venomous Chad registers as a horrific hybrid of the vicious gossip columnist J.J. Hunsecker, played by Burt Lancaster in Sweet Smell Of Success, and the conniving, manipulative philanderer Valmont, played by John Malkovich in Dangerous Liaisons. Yet the weaker, less forthright Howard ultimately proves even more repellent in his own creepy way. Reminiscent of David Mamet's work in its themes and sharp dialogue - and specifically of Glengarry Glen Ross and Oleanna - the film extends its scope further in a scene where Chad reveals his racism and, it is suggested, repressed homosexuality, when ordering a junior black executive to drop his trousers. Made on a very low budget, the film makes minimal use of sets and camera movements, heightening the often unbearable intensity of the atmosphere it so chillingly establishes.
Labute's riveting, slow-burning drama is unflinching in its head-on approach to delicate subject matter, touching raw nerves and triggering heated debate. While it deals unflinchingly with misogyny, the film is not itself misogynistic and it may well prove more painful to watch for men than for women. Nor should it be interpreted as an anti-male movie - it is not saying that all men harbour hateful anti-women views founded in fear and distrust, but there are some who do and LaBute presents two vividly defined examples.
Charged by the power of its three superb central performances, In The Company Of Men builds to an electrifying and shocking climax.
