En compañía de lobos

Let's all thank god for Neil Jordan. Not only did he bring Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire to the screen in an uncompromising, superb adaptation, but way back at the start of his career he also brought us this mini-masterpiece about werewolves.

The setup is simple. A teenage girl in a country manor falls asleep while reading a magazine (with a cover story entitled "the shattered dream" -- a subtle hint to some of the themes of this movie), and she has a disturbing dream involving wolves which appears to take place in the woods visible from her bedroom window. It begins with a girl being chased down by a pack of wolves and killed, then we move to her funeral and discover she had a sister. The sister is your typical inquisitive girl just blossoming into womanhood, and her wise old grandmother tells her stories about men changing into wolves, with the message that all men are beasts. These stories make the girl uncomfortable about the advances of a local boy, and later a charming nobleman, and her perceptions of her parent's love life don't help. As the town becomes more and more terrified by the danger of wolf attacks, they begin to unearth evidence that there are in fact werewolves out in the woods. These findings and her own active imagination lead the girl to come up with her own werewolf stories. And when she is sent out through the woods with a red cloak and basket to visit her grandmother, you just know that there's going to be trouble ...

The Company of Wolves is a well-made, smart and highly original piece of work, and it is this movie that got Irish director Neil Jordan noticed internationally. The surreal, dream-like atmosphere of the movie is both superb and engaging, and the metaphorical nature of the movie is reasonably subtle. It is about a young girl's coming-of-age, trying to decide whether or not all men are in fact beasts when she still isn't quite sure exactly what they want from her.

Generally, werewolf movies made by European film-makers tend to have more substance and more familiarity with actual werewolf folklore -- it is part of our history after all, while Hollywood has had to create it's own werewolf myth over the years. This is probably the best British werewolf movie, followed by Dog Soldiers and Curse of the Werewolf, but even American classics like The Wolf Man and of course An American Werewolf in London, had to be set in Britain.

The lead role is played by Sarah Patterson, a young girl in her debut role at just 12 years old. After this she only appeared in one more movie (Snow White, also in the Canon Movie Tales series) then for some reason gave up on movie acting. She would certainly have had a successful career after this, you would think. The supporting actors also do good jobs, particularly Micha Bergese as the huntsman and Angela Lansbury as the creative grandmother. Other well-known names appear here in smaller roles, including Brian Glover (the yorkshireman from American Werewolf), David Warner, Stephen Rea and Terence Stamp.

It currently ranks as one of my all-time favourite werewolf movies, and I expect it to grow on me even more over time. I can recommend this without any reservation.

Thirteen-year-old teenager Rosaleen : Sarah Petterson lives with her parents : David Warner , Tusse Silberg, on the outskirts of a forbidding forest . Meanwhile , the beautiful girl listens her grandmother : Angela Lansbury telling fairy tales and the latter fills the heroine's head with grim stories of wolves until a sticky final . As Rosaleen dreams of a medieval fantasy environment inhabited by men who turn into wolves. As the bizarre world in which the charming teen lives is full of polecats, owls , toads , snakes , hopping , prowling and slithering round the crooked houses of the woods .

A horror fairy tale , being consistently paced , freely based on Charles's Perrault's Little Red Riding Hood and crossing it with Legend of the Werewolf . Weird terror movie that's heavy on dreamy visuals , gorgeous production design by Anthon Furst , colorful cinematography by Bryan Loftus , primitive but acceptable special effects with gruesomely vivid werewolves and Freudian symbolism . Main cast and support cast are frankly excellent , giving powerful interpretations . Starring attractive Sarah Patterson as the girl who's on the verge of womanhood and discovers rare worlds , in spite of her early age she gives an enticing acting , as well as high quality performance from veteran Angela Lansbury as the sympathetic granny , along with brief interpretations from David Warner, Georgia Slowe, Graham Cowden , Brian Glover , Terence Stamp and Stephen Rea who is Jordan's regular .

It displays a sensitive and atmospheric musical score by George Fenton, adding a medieval backgrounding sounds . The motion picture was original and compellingly written -along with Angela Carter- and directed by Neil Jordan . This great filmmaker has made splendid movies, such as : Mona Lisa , High Spirits , We're no Angels , The Crying Game , The Miracle , Interview with the Vampire, in Dreams, Michael Collins , The Butcher Boy , The Good Thief , The Brave One , Byzantium , among others . Rating : Better than average . Worthwhile watching . Essential and indispensable seeing.

The company of wolves is very far from being the typical movie about werewolves, it's very different from films such as An American Werewolf in London or The Howling. This film is full of symbolism, it's a kind of rewriting of Perrault's Little Red Ridding Hood with Freudian elements. The film was directed by Neil Jordan, but in it we can notice the writing of Angela Carter, an author who is mainly interested in rewriting folklore myths from a feminist point of view. If you see this film you will enter a world of magic, of dreams, not only by means of the script, but also by the settings, which are really wonderful. The film itself deals with the end of childhood and the beginning of adolescence, with all its sexual connotations, and the loss of innocence. When we become adults we realize life is not a magic tale. All this is treated from a feminist point of view, the main character is a girl who dreams about several stories with werewolves. Visually the movie is incredible, and it manages to reflect the symbolism of woods, the mixture of light and darkness, the magic creatures which live there during the night and the dangerous inside them especially for the girls who don't follow the path. From my point of view the film is one of the best dealing with the myth of werewolves, mainly because the film is a metaphor of life, of the human specie, all of us have an animal inside.

Rosaleen (Sarah Patterson) is a teenager, living in a country house in England with her family in the present days, and having a nightmare with wolves and werewolves in the Middle Ages. In her dream, her boring sister is dead, she lives with her father (David Warner) and her mother (Tusse Silberg), but she spends lots of time with her lovely grandmother (Angela Lansbury). Granny tells her many stories of werewolf and gives her the following advice: "- Never stray from the path in the woods, never eat a windfall apple, and never trust a man whose eyebrows meet." One day, Rosaleen, while going to visit her grandmother, meets a handsome man and bets who would arrive first at her granny's house. Soon she finds who he is.

"In the Company of Wolves" is the second and one of the most fascinating films by Neil Jordan. Based on the fairy tale of the Little Red Riding Hood, it is indeed an adult stylized version of the tale in a dreamlike atmosphere with open end. But further than that, it is also a spectacular approach of the beginning of the puberty, losing of the innocence through wild and erotic dreams, when the character of Sarah Patterson is becoming a young woman. Neil Jordan makes an excellent horror movie, which can have the most different interpretations, depending on the experience of the viewer. He uses many symbols, such as the lipstick, or the first date of Rosaleen. The gorgeous and promising actress Sarah Patterson has never become a star. With her interpretation in this cult-movie, any fan would believe she would have a great career ahead, what has never come true. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): "A Companhia dos Lobos" ("The Company of the Wolves")

Note: On 23 March 2024, I saw this film again.

I cannot recommend this movie highly enough.

The Company of Wolves is Little Red Riding Hood, expanded into it's essential truth, and told on the screen as stories within a dream. Everything is here; the girl, the wolf, the mysterious and terrible Wald that vomits up the kind of black myths which only inhabit the inner world of young girls and midieval Germans.

Angela Lansbury is Granny, the role she was born to play; "Never stray from the path, never eat a windfall apple, and never trust a man whose eyebrows meet."

I'd didn't realize how numb I had become to CGI until I watched this movie with it's meaty animatronics. Also featured is a very large and diverse cast of real animals, most of whom make brief cameos as portents in obscure corners of the frame. Man, there's nothing for communicating animalness like real animals. It must have been a pain to choreograph the animals in the movie, but so worth it.

If you've noticed that the more rich people get, the less able they are to distinguish human beings from animals (Picture: a dog, dressed in a sweater, seated at a high chair in a restaurant, eating off the table out of a crystal bowl. This actually happens in the tonier and more depraved neighborhoods in America) then you will love the 19th century wedding scene.

A true fairy tale doesn't have a moral, but it does have rules. "Mummy, does daddy hurt you when he... it sounds like... the beast Granny talked about." "Your Granny ... knows a lot, but she doesn't know everything. And if there's a beast in men, it meets it's match in women too."

Hahaha fair enough.