Director: Peter Cattaneo
Cast: Alfonsina Carrocio, Steve Coogan, Vivian El Jaber, Bjorn Gustafsson, David Herrero, Jonathan Pryce
(M) ★★★+
REVIEWED BY TOM MCKINLAY
There was a story on RNZ last weekend about dogs’ eyebrows; apparently, they’ve evolved to facilitate the manipulation of humans. To us, it looks like the canine is having a melancholic moment so we rush in with the affection and chewy treats. It’s all projection.
A similar sort of thing plays out in The Penguin Lessons, a simultaneously charming and timely film, wherein various of the human characters project an empathy for their issues on to the inscrutable bird of the title.
Steve Coogan is a disengaged peripatetic English teacher, a spent force in the classroom, hired by an exclusive school in Argentina - just as the generals take power again in the 1976 coup.
He intends a quiet expat idyll but enter the scene-stealing penguin - and the regime’s goons - and things turn out otherwise. Initially, Coogan’s character saves the penguin, but could it be that, ultimately, it’s the penguin doing the saving?
The Magellanic penguin, Juan Salvador, is in fact played by several penguins, and this is crucial.
Time and again the bird seems to be following the director’s instructions to the letter. But as recorded by the Hollywood press, this was achieved as a result of the penguin breed’s close couple bonding. When one of the pair on set was gently but strategically transported to the far end of a room, the other would soon waddle over. And, cut.
No doubt, a measure of patience was required of the human cast, and that seems to have spilled over into Cattaneo’s (The Full Monty) storytelling, which is allowed to unfold in its own good time.
As the far right lunges for power in these the sunset years of the western hegemony, The Penguin Lessons does a nice job of revealing the grubby, fear-mongering ignorance of desperate authoritarianism, without labouring the point. There is, of course, no sophistication to uncover there.
So, both inside the gates of the school and outside, the regimes are all about demanding silence and subservience in the interests of the already powerful.
Coogan delivers a nicely understated performance as the world-weary teacher, while the supporting cast does its best to pinch the odd scene back from Juan Salvador.
Bjorn Gustafsson is a hoot as a jilted Finnish science teacher and Vivian El Jaber is a trick as one of the school’s housekeepers.
