by Christine Westwood
Worth: $15.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Steve Coogan, Jonathan Pryce, Michaela Breque, Vivian El Jaber, Björn Gustafsson, David Herrero
Intro:
What saves the film from cliched sentimentality is Coogan’s note-perfect performance. His comic timing and light, sustained pitch are excellent as always.
So, there’s a penguin and, yes, it attends lessons, at a prestigious school in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It also gives life lessons, mainly to teacher Michell (Steve Coogan), a cynical burnout, who is looking for a mildly hedonistic, checked-out life after losing his wife.
You would be forgiven for thinking that the storyline is a bit of sentimental hokum, except it is based on Tom Mitchell’s memoir in which he really did keep a king penguin at his school and used it to engage the privileged pupils in their lessons.
Poignantly, the penguin was one of hundreds that were victims of oil spills when tankers polluted the seas and beaches, destroying wildlife in their wake. This particular penguin was still alive when Michell spots him on a beach in Venezuela. Or rather, it’s a woman (Michaela Breque) he hooked up with for the night, who insists that they rescue the bird. Michell doesn’t score with his date, but after washing the bird in the hotel bath, finds that he has picked up another companion. The penguin insists on following him until he is forced to smuggle the creature across the border and back to his school.
The other theme of the story is the backdrop of military occupation in Argentina’s military dictatorship. This is maintained on a low, slow burn with the atrocities occurring outside the sanctuary of the school. The political backdrop breaks into Michell’s world when the granddaughter of school domestic Maria, played with great comic theatre by Vívian El Jaber, disappears. She becomes one of the tragic statistics of Peron’s regime and the coup of 1976, and her grandmother joins the brave women who formed the ‘Mothers of the Disappeared’ protest group.
Michell is stirred to ethical actions with this scenario and with his penguin rescue. The ‘unruly boys’ at his school are blandly unbelievable, the attempt to thread a frankly monstrous political background with a cute-animal-redeems-man story lacks real punch. What saves the film from cliched sentimentality is Coogan’s note-perfect performance. His comic timing and light, sustained pitch are excellent as always.
Director Peter Cattaneo, best known for The Full Monty, is no stranger to the theme of lost men trying to find their way. Jeff Pope wrote the screenplay. His Philomena, produced, starring and co-written by Coogan, has a similar gentle tone.
Apart from El Jaber, there are good characterisations by the always reliable Jonathon Pryce as the traditionalist school principal, and Swedish comic actor Björn Gustafsson as ingenuous teaching buddy Tapio, trying to keep up with Michell’s cynical sophistication.
A strength of the film is the aesthetic that evokes the place and 1970s period beautifully. Isona Rigau’s production design is confidently authentic and Xavi Giménez’s cinematography makes the most of its gorgeous locations.
