In the Company of Women (2021 | USA | 97 minutes | Kahlil Silver)
A local film shot and set in Seattle, In the Company of Women is an occasionally interesting if ultimately misguided story that never manages to find a compelling narrative groove.
The story is that a younger man who works as an escort, played by Shogi Silver (who also wrote the film), is given one last job for an agency after a falling out. How do we know there was a falling out? The escort, who is not named, is beaten up in the beginning of the film and told by a woman named Isabelle that he has to do this one last thing for her.
This final task is to take an older man named Peter (Paul Eenhoorn) out to help him find a connection. This non-sexual encounter is different from a normal job for the escort and he initially considers bailing. When Peter offers him twenty thousand dollars in cash, an absurd amount of money for one night of work, the escort changes his mind and agrees to be his wingman. The two men spend a night out on the town and learn about each other’s respective pasts, building an unexpected connection along the way.
The best part of the film remains Eenhoorn, a local actor who has made a respectable acting career in a variety of small roles, though the rest of the story does not serve him or the character well. Paul is a professor who has recently experienced loss and continually pushes back on the assumption that he is going out just to get laid. Rather, he says he wants to build a more genuine relationship with someone to fill the void in his life.
The direction actively undoes this at key moments, calling attention to a scene early on when Paul gawks at a waitress by staring at her breasts. It is a strange moment that disrupts the flow of an already awkward scene while also making it feel like Paul is actually quite creepy. The moment passes quickly enough, though it makes it unclear why the film decided to bring attention to his leering if he is also meant to be a likeable and sympathetic character.
There are moments where Eenhoorn instills his character with more depth than anything else going on in the film, though it is crushed under the rest of the meandering plot. The central focus is about how Paul and his wingman have different perspectives on modern relationships. This is established as a generational difference though it all comes across as increasingly shallow and forced, never feeling like an authentic conversation between two people of different viewpoints.
Some of this may have to do with the fact that the advice Paul gets from his wingman is often bad, built upon an air of bravado that is never convincing. When he tells Paul to never exchange numbers with someone, his wingman says it is because a woman will find a way to reach out to you if they want it enough. This sets up a joke of sorts later, though is the exact type of game playing that so-called “pickup artists” say that never actually works.
It is there that the biggest issue of In the Company of Women arises. There is no central logic or compelling core to the story. Paul is clearly struggling with something, though it is largely relegated to disconnected flashbacks that feel separate from the story. It struggles to find an emotionally profound moment by failing to put in the work or emphasis to earn one. His wingman is similarly all bluster and no substance, a point the film could delve deeper into as an intentional point of interest. Instead, it feels like an element of the story that it is unaware of as it treats him as really being alluringly charismatic when he never is.
This is seen most clearly in an early scene at the most awkwardly brightly lit bar of all time. The wingman strikes up conversation with a group of women, who can only loosely be described as “characters” as they never get much characterization. His “charm” only works because the logic of the movie needs it to, not because he actually is all that convincing as a smooth-talking huckster. It is all very flatly meandering, plodding along with no real direction or vision about what it wants to be. A rushed and sentimental ending only makes it feel more hollow.
You can watch In the Company of Women on Amazon Prime Video.