“Penguins only have one partner. When they lose their mate, they never take another one,” a student tells his English teacher Tom Michell (Steve Coogan) during a pivotal moment in the dramatic comedy “The Penguin Lessons.”
Based on a memoir of the same name by the real-life Michell, the film adaptation tells the story of how an adorable penguin gets a new companion in the form of a mercurial yet charming British man who is stunted by his tragic past. Si pinguino, named Juan Salvador, brings anthropomorphized hope to Michell and the elite boarding school St. George’s College in Buenos Aires where he teaches the sons of wealthy Latin American families during a time of intense political upheaval.
The real-life Michell took a liking right away to the oil-soaked penguin washed up on a beach. But the film’s version of Michell is reluctant and, after he realizes the rescue won’t help him bed the woman who prompted his heroics, he tries repeatedly to ditch the bird.
But just as the slippery pitter patter of Juan Salvador’s webbed feet waddling forward can’t help but endear viewers to him, Michell comes around. Juan Salvador and Steve Coogan (yes, penguin, human in that order) are an imminently watchable pairing. Eventually the Magellanic penguin plods his way into the hearts and minds of the entire school, becoming confidante, emotional support animal, and yes, even teaching assistant (well, kinda) in a school struggling to deal with the implications of the new military regime.
The film is peppered with comedic delight. Coogan’s deadpan gravitas leads the way in a cast that mostly delivers: from the stodgy headmaster played by veteran actor Jonathan Pryce, costumed like a British Colonel Sanders, to Bjorn Gustaffsson’s broken-hearted, verbose teacher who treats Juan Salvador like his shrink, to the sharp cleaner and abuelita portrayed with wit by Vivian El Jaber.
“The idea of making a cute penguin film didn’t really interest me,” said Cattaneo, during the Q&A after the film’s Toronto premiere. “Writing the balance of the comedy and the pathos just felt like a great kind of tension that could be really thrilling to watch.” But the balance between comedy and pathos is noticeably off, and the choice to deploy the tumult of the military coup to fuel its historically diluted attempts at pathos misguided.
The film’s aesthetic interest mostly flies under the radar. Its interest stems from how the scenes land like a series of vignettes, that transition from stillness to hysterics on a dime. There’s something about having to act opposite a real live penguin that seems to force the actors even more deeply into the present moment, into listening just a little bit more, into the fundamentals of acting is reacting. (At the film’s TIFF premiere Cattaneo said he used one primary penguin named Ricard, swapping in others when needed in consultation with the French penguin handlers.) But the overall ordinariness of the film — from the predictable script and unremarkable cinematography and production design — keep it from fully profiting from this heightened sense of presence. That is until the very end when the film closes with a poetic overhead shot from cinematographer Xavi Giménez that positions Michell as a center point in a diagonal between the school community and their beloved pinguino Juan Salvador. It the most effective visual at revealing how he has elevated each of their experiences into something larger than themselves.
But ultimately the significance of Argentinian political struggle becomes its ability to be a catalyst for Michell’s breakthrough. The historical backdrop of “The Penguin Lessons” is what’s known as Argentina’s “Dirty War” when President Eva Peron’s government was deposed in a military coup and replaced by a United States-backed military government on March 24, 1976. Sophia, (Uruguayan Alfonsina Carrocio, “Society of the Snow”) the idealistic young cleaner at St. George’s has boldly attended public protests against theregime. The script makes a point of showing us she is against the violent tactics of the Montoneros, the leftist opposition group a la she’s one of the good ones. Like thousands of everyday Argentinians during that period, Sophia is eventually “disappeared” taken by plainclothes police from the Plaza de Mayo, right after an upbeat conversation with Michell.
Eventually, thanks in part to the impact the penguin is having him on him, Michell listens to the pleas of Sophia’s grandmother, another cleaner at St. George’s, and decides to confront one of the policemen he saw abduct Sophia. He is then threatened and jailed by one of several menacing one-dimensional Argentine authorities peppered throughout the pic. He emerges from one night in jail with cuts on his face, not broken, but with a new lease on life. Cattaneo and Pope stop short of portraying Michell as a full blown freedom fighter, but ultimately in true white savior fashion, the face of the opposition becomes synonymous with Michell not Sophia, the Argentine who, based on historical record, we can stand to reason underwent impossible brutality for much longer and likely wouldn’t have survived.
This isn’t to superimpose documentary where it’s not called for, but using a distorted version of crucial historical events as a plot device that lionizes the British expat in a country that is not his own isn’t pathos, it’s objectification.
Grade: C
“The Penguin Lessons” premiered at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
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