Writer/director Neil Labute's ears are probably still burning from the praise heaped on his debut feature In The Company Of Men after its spring screening in Sundance.
Awarded the festival's Filmmakers' Trophy, it was quickly picked up for international distribution by Alliance (which is also handling Atom Egoyan's Competition entry The Sweet Hereafter. Alliance clearly sees it as another indie film with attitude, a natural successor to Greg Mottola's The Daytrippers and Todd Solondz's Welcome To The Dollhouse.
It's a battle of the sexes comedy with a vicious slant. The protagonists are a pair of twentysomething yuppies with grievous chips on their shoulders. Unhappy in their careers and in their love lives, Chad (Aaron Eckhart) and Howard (Matt Molloy) vent their spleen on an ingenuous young deaf woman (Stacy Edwards) who has just started work in the office typing pool. Their plan is to lure her into a relationship, then discard her in brutal, peremptory fashion.
Detroit-born Labute, who is in his early 30s, is ambivalent about his two main characters. "They're not exactly people I'd want to spend time with, but there's something about them that everyone can connect with."
While a student, he spent several months on a literary scholarship at London's Royal Court Theatre, the spiritual home of the "angry young men" who jolted British culture out of its complacency in the late 1950s, and also of many of the most provocative British plawyrights of recent years. He acknowledges the influence as crucial.
"Brenton, Bond, Barker, Hare, Wesker", he reels off the names like a shopping list, "they are all such strong writers." He freely acknowledges their influence on In The Company Of Men. "They all had that same sense that you're not just there to entertain the audience, you can make them work too. You're there to raise questions, not to answer them."
Geoffrey Macnab
Prod co: Company One Productions
Prod: Stephen Pevner
Dir/Scr: Neil Labute
Ph: Tony Hettinger
Ed: Joel Plotch
Cast: Aaron Eckhart, Stacy Edwards, Matt Molloy
Running time: 93 mins
Int sales: Alliance
