Final Rating: 3/5
There’s not a penguin in sight when The Penguin Lessons opens like a ’70s sitcom – with a score by Federico Jusid to match. The playful tone is your first indication that this latest effort from Peter Cattaneo, previously best known for the classic 1997 dad-bod stripper romp The Full Monty, is going to be a much gentler tour through the devastating people-disappearing politics of South American military dictatorships than, say, the recent I’m Still Here. But the film, and its star Steve Coogan, don’t really come to life until the penguin enters the picture about 25 minutes into the 1h52 runtime.
It’s clear, retrospectively, that the movie made excellent use of that first half hour to start tying strings to your heart it can tug at later. The colorful cast of characters starts with Coogan’s Tom Michell – the second lead after the penguin Juan Salvador. Michell is a depressed middle-aged Brit who takes a job as an English teacher at a school in Argentina in 1976. Incidentally, this also provides a convenient excuse to keep the film largely in English, with appropriate Spanish asides sprinkled in (Michell, the character, is fluent).
The other most-credited star is Jonathan Pryce, as the headmaster who spends the majority of the movie bumping heads with Michell, going on his own journey of deciding how to cope with – or ignore – the growing military threat reaching into his school’s community. Notable members of this community include a local cleaner and her politically minded granddaughter, a friendly fishmonger, a bullied student and his fascist schoolmates, and Michell’s ‘kooky’ Finnish neighbor and teaching colleague. The last is played by Swede Björn Gustafsson very much against actual Finnish stereotypes, though it’s not clear whether the filmmakers realize that.
Coogan reportedly spent weeks getting to know his penguin co-stars Papa and Richard, who shared the role with each other and occasional additional prop penguins for more precarious sequences. It’s this time spent building comfort between the human and animal actors that really sells the film. However, as the story began to unfold, I couldn’t help but think of a legendary event in my own social circle once upon a time, when some friends of friends broke into our local zoo one night, penguin-napped an animal, and took the poor thing out for a night on the town – sheepishly returning the penguin by dawn when the smell became too much. So I was relieved when they mentioned the smell. Repeatedly.
It should be noted that the based-on-a-true-story The Penguin Lessons, which had strong source material to pull from: a highly rated 2015 memoir written by Tom Michell himself. The screenplay was adapted by Jeff Pope, who penned such previous indie darlings as Philomena (2013) and The Lost King (2022). Based on summaries and reviews of the book, it’s clear the film has taken the usual liberties in its adaptation. For one, Michell was in his twenties during these events, making it much less surprising he would think smuggling a penguin he rescued from an Uruguayan oil spill back into Argentina was a reasonable idea. But it seems neither book nor film is really interested in the mechanics of the political implosion in which the story is set.
There is no discussion of the Falkland Islands, or even the ruling Perón family. At times it feels rather out of touch with the realities it’s depicting – which is likely exacerbated by the fact it was filmed in Spain, a co-production with the UK, both countries located on an entirely different continent. Expect the stage to be set with more telling than showing of historical details, like the script is running down a tour guide’s checklist. On the teaching side, it’s the type of movie where you know class is going well when everyone lays down on the floor to ‘get a new perspective.’
Framed by cinematographer Xavi Giménez’s dust-filtered coastal vistas, this take is clearly meant to be light, inoffensive fare (though, be prepared for a gut punch at the end). The film’s lighter touch transforms it into a Saturday evening family flick viewers might be more likely to recommend to people in their lives than the darker-toned films that ‘better’ represent the devastating reality of living in a society where people around you may just suddenly disappear. Which is a big pro, as the story feels tragically ‘of the moment’ in a way the modern English-speaking and European audiences it’s targeting hoped to never understand. Sometimes a spoonful of sugar, or an eyeful of penguin charm, really does make the political commentary medicine go down. And those are two deeply adorable, phenomenally well-trained penguins.
Thank you to Sony Pictures and Star PR for the screener.
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