‘In the Company of Rose’ Review: A Singular Woman and a Life Well Lived

In 2014, the movie and theater director James Lapine was invited to a Martha’s Vineyard lunch with the author Rose Styron, the widow of the novelist William Styron (“The Confessions of Nat Turner,” “Sophie’s Choice”). At the lunch, Lapine proceeded to document an impromptu interview with Rose. Unlike lesser mortals, Lapine (a protean pressure in American arts who wrote the e-book for and directed Sondheim’s “Sunday in the Park With George,” amongst different issues) has the means to spin a characteristic movie out of such an encounter.

Composed of archival footage and interviews finished with extra polished tools through the years, “In the Company of Rose” is a nice portrait of an admittedly rarefied world, however one which doesn’t transcend its vanity-project origins. Perhaps it doesn’t intend to. As Lapine, who narrates the movie, admits, “I’ve often jumped into projects without really knowing what I was doing.” In her account of her life, Rose, too, appears to have moved ahead with out an excessive amount of calculation. She recollects being unimpressed by Styron at a studying for his first novel, “Lie Down In Darkness,” they solely clicked later, in Rome, the place Rose was finding out and William was residing on a fellowship.

Rose, now 95, is form, cheerful, frank, and she or he has a knack for telling tales laden with well-known figures with out sounding as if she’s name-dropping. She typed Styron’s work for practically a decade. On changing into serious about human rights, she traveled for Amnesty International. She says that she and her husband resembled a stereotypically Fifties American couple, and that they managed their marriage “mainly by not talking about things, instead of talking about them.” But when Styron had despair within the Nineteen Eighties she was a stalwart helpmate in his restoration, and inspired him to jot down “Darkness Visible,” the memoir that has turn into certainly one of his finest identified works. As existences in rarefied worlds go, this one performs as well-lived.

In the Company of Rose
Not Rated. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes. In theaters and obtainable to hire or purchase on most main platforms.