“Originally, I wanted to make a Susan Smith kind of movie about a woman who killed her baby. But it never got anywhere. I just didn’t care about it… Somebody else can make that. I want[ed] to watch the people who don’t kill their baby. The ones who get through it! Present Company was about taking out the dramatics.” — Frank V. Ross
Frank V. Ross constructs each of his films with a great amount of resistance. He actively strips away the excesses of plot-oriented filmmaking, working to reach the very nerve of the emotional and imaginative issues within his narratives. Present Company (2008) remains the most dramatically and stylistically confined of his films. He turned what could have become a standard domestic melodrama about a relationship past the end of its ropes into a lean and tough examination of brutally inhibited lives. The film denies opportunities, for both characters and viewers, to escape into the heightened emotions of melodrama. Ross structures Present Company to blunt its own momentum — pressurizing scenes through its characters’ avoidance of confrontation, allowing the film to reach toward moments of potential progress before collapsing upon itself like a trap.
Ross and Tamara Fana respectively play Buddy and Christy, an unmarried couple with a baby named Mikey. Opposites tend to attract in Ross’ films, but for these diametrically opposed partners, any attraction there may have been has turned into a loveless stalemate. Buddy works as a plumber’s apprentice; Christy has a restaurant job. They live together with Mikey in Christy’s parents’ basement. Buddy is selfish and rough-mannered — the type of guy who slices callouses off his feet with a pocket knife in the living room. Christy is more sensitive and reserved. A great deal of their free time is spent apart, mostly with Buddy away from the house with friends while Christy cares for Mikey. They both seem to enjoy being at work more than being together. They, and everyone around them, seem to recognize the unhealthy state of Buddy and Christy’s relationship, but enacting any sort of change proves to be a challenge.
Present Company went through multiple conceptual incarnations, with each version whittling further away at the structural reliance on conflict-driven narratives and the emotional theatrics found in standard melodramas. Initially, Ross had planned to make a film inspired by the Susan Smith murders, about an aspiring musician who becomes pregnant and ends up killing her baby. He quickly abandoned the idea, finding its tragic nature to be too limiting. His next approach centered around another unplanned pregnancy inspired by a couple Ross knew. The story led to further revisions, as Ross took issue with how the narrative again focused all of its stakes around the major, life-altering consequences of having the child or not.
The final screenplay for Present Company drastically lessens the urgency surrounding the characters, allowing the film to engage with a variety of more nuanced issues rather than a single all-encompassing conflict. Ross sets the film when Mikey is of walking age. The couple’s discord has become routine. Grand ambitions have made way for practicalities, and dreams are no longer at stake — not dead, so much as pushed to the side. Christy is an aspiring writer, but paying the bills and caring for her son requires most of her time. Her creative pursuits are a weekend activity. They have very little going for them beyond making ends meet, but there is at least a fragile sense of stability in their stasis.
Ross has said that Present Company is about people doing the right thing even though they shouldn’t be. Buddy and Christy have made the decision to stay together for the kid and it proves to be damaging for all parties involved. But in stripping the melodramatic conventions from his film, Ross creates a situation where the very problem for his characters lies in their inability to be melodramatic. They speak around issues and avoid direct confrontation. Their frustrations permeate through minor squabbles over dirty dishes or sharing the car. With their reluctance to express themselves, their relationship is left in an unarticulated mess of unresolved tension. Even as Buddy and Christy both pursue other romantic options and develop genuine feelings for these suitors, they act with hesitance, appearing uncertain of what the consequences of separating could entail.
Most of the action in Present Company is staged within the interior spaces of Buddy and Christy’s basement dwellings and the kitchens or living rooms of friends. Ross employed five camera operators for the shoot, including himself, Fana and Joe Swanberg, who also has a small role as Buddy’s friend Archie. Many shots deny a clear view of the characters’ surroundings. The open-framing is often blocked out through the positioning of characters. In the rare cases when the film moves into more open or public spaces, Ross retains a feeling of confinement. He empties a scene at a grocery store of nearly all other shoppers, going so far as to make Craig, Christy’s soon-to-be suitor (played by Ross regular Tony Baker), leap into the frame as if he had to burst through a barrier to engage with Christy and Mikey.
Similarly, Ross’ sound design — usually so spacious and layered with environmental details — works to insulate our sense of Buddy’s and Christy’s world. In Buddy’s first scene alone with Sam (Sasha Gioppo), a burlesque dancer he meets through friends and later pursues, they go for a walk on a street overwhelmed by the droning chirps of cicadas. When Buddy takes Mikey to a park, they are framed alone by a slide, with the sound of other children present but barely audible under the score. As the weight of circumstance impinges upon nearly all of Buddy and Christy’s interactions, Ross uses this blocky density to bring structure to the limitations placed upon his characters. Our perspective is granted just enough of a view of his characters’ environments to feel how isolated they are and how rarely opportunities to break from their claustrophobic home life present themselves.
In the absence of a traditional plot-driven narrative, Ross builds complications into his scenes that work to impede his characters’ attempts to escape or avoid their problems. Simple weekend excursions with friends are derailed by unforeseen circumstances — including one of the most hilariously anticlimactic acid trips ever put on screen — or tainted by selfish behavior. Even Buddy and Christy’s arguments tend to begin as attempts to joke or peacefully engage with each other. Ross structures a scene of Buddy recounting a conversation with a telemarketer to Christy in a way that avoids creating a sense of unity at every step. Buddy’s delivery comes across as a comedy routine, with Christy’s attempts to converse with him registering as interruptions from his act that eventually lead to an argument. This approach to narrative is far from a fatalistic or cynical gesture, but rather a formal demonstration of how difficult it can be to incite progressive action. Even as Ross builds his scenes to urge his characters toward facing their problems, Buddy and Christy doggedly avoid addressing the awful truth regarding their toxic relationship.
The film’s greatest achievement comes in its centerpiece sequence that parallels Buddy and Christy’s night spent apart with potential new lovers. These suitors challenge aspects of their identities and present them with anything but easy paths to new beginnings. Buddy is paired with the vibrant burlesque dancer Sam. Her candor stands in stark contrast to the way Buddy puts up such an assertive front while suppressing so much about himself, notably the fact he is a father and in a relationship. When Sam invites Buddy over after one of her shows, her intimacy pushes him out of his comfort zone. There is a dramatic shift in tone during this sequence, which was shot by Swanberg. Where Buddy’s brashness allows him to walk over the mild-mannered Christy, Sam requires participation. She asks him embarrassing questions and engages him in the delicate act of taking off her fake eyelashes. Where most films would be quick to paint Buddy as definitively villainous, Ross allows him vulnerability. With Sam, he is placed in a position to be shy. His uncertainty shows the way her intimacy and forthrightness have broken his guard down, putting him in a situation that he is not entirely equipped to handle.
Craig puts Christy in an equally vulnerable place. In his first appearance at the grocery store, he seems to be the lively and enthusiastic antithesis to Buddy — Christy’s asbestos-cleaning knight in shining armor. Christy is reliant on those around her to bring her out of her shell, creating a soft spot that Buddy often uses against her. Craig immediately sets himself apart as he fawns over Christy and jokes with her. He is tactile and attentive, picking up a pen that Mikey throws on the ground and complimenting Christy’s “rock star” studded belt. For the first time we see Christy light up.
Their courtship immediately takes an odd turn, as Craig invites Christy to his father’s wake. Through talks with her coworkers, Christy shows that she has serious feelings for Craig and recognizes him to be a rare opportunity for a fresh start. She dresses up and wears her rock star belt. By the time she arrives, Craig is drunk and only two uncomfortable-looking female guests remain. Throughout the scene, we see Christy’s hope and enthusiasm fade to disappointment. Craig still fawns over her, but he fumbles his words and botches a kiss. The exuberance he displayed at the grocery store has turned sloppy and pathetic. He seems aware that he is blowing it, which makes the scene all the more painful.
As Ross contrasts Christy’s letdown with the tenderness developing between Buddy and Sam, future troubles come into sharper focus. While Buddy does let his guard down and steps up to the intimate challenges Sam presents, we see that his lack of honesty regarding his personal life leaves a lot of explaining to do, to both Sam and Christy. But Christy is placed in a more challenging position. Buddy’s disinterest in being a parent puts the brunt of the responsibility onto Christy, and his lack of emotional attachment allows him the freedom to pursue another lover. With all she has on her plate, developing a new relationship — let alone with someone as needy as Craig proves to be — would take time and space she doesn’t have. When Christy greets Buddy upon his late morning-after return from Sam’s, they both avoid discussing their nights for vastly different reasons.
Buddy and Christy eventually address the reality of their situation. They quietly initiate a significant change in their lives, yet Ross’ narrative leads to no fairytale resolution. The film ultimately finds hope in its characters’ destabilized positions through a final gesture of unexpected empathy. But the sole certainty Present Company allows is the assurance of further complications and the promise of more work ahead.
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