‘The Penguin Lessons’: Toronto Review

Dir: Peter Cattaneo. UK. 2024. 110mins

Whereas instructing at a prestigious British non-public faculty in politically tumultuous Seventies Buenos Aires, a callow English professor rescues a penguin which turns into a useful instructing instrument — each for his impressionable younger college students, and himself. Adapting the 2015 memoir by Tom Michell, director Peter Cattaneo (no stranger to helming feel-good fare like The Full Monty, The Rocker and Navy Wives) and screenwriter Jeff Pope initially observe the guide’s tight focus throughout the cloistered confines of the college. However whereas Michell’s story is little doubt a heartwarming one, the choice to transcend the confines of his lived expertise and use the broader socio-political panorama so as to add additional drama is ill-judged — and will hamper its journey following its Toronto debut.

Proves to be neither fish nor fowl

Lionsgate have UK rights, and residential audiences may properly be tempted by the buddy film teaming of a penguin and the ever-watchable Steve Coogan. He performs English instructor Michell, who arrives at St George’s Faculty on the outskirts of Buenos Aires in 1976 and is stunned to be greeted by twitchy armed guards. You don’t want to talk Spanish to know the offended ‘bastardos fascistas’ graffiti daubed on the wall; an explosion on town skyline behind him is one other conveniently-timed trace at unrest. However, as soon as contained in the grounds, St George’s reveals itself to be a fantastic English oasis, Xavi Gimenez’s digicam giving its manicured lawns, tennis courts and sunny terraces (and all the movie’s places all through Gran Canaria, Argentina and Uruguay) an optimistic sheen.

It’s instantly clear that this can be a utterly totally different world from the one exterior, through which Argentinian president Isabel Perón is being ousted in a navy coup that will usher in an eight-year navy dictatorship. The college’s fussy headmaster (Jonathan Pryce) virtually instantly warns Michell that, as an establishment populated by boys of native wealthy households, they have to hold their politics to themselves and their opinions solely impartial.

In early scenes, faculty life is barely sometimes interrupted by the distant sound of battle, or hushed conversations between the native fishmonger and Sophia (Alfonsina Carrocio), one of many faculty’s Argentinian cleaners, which Michell — a fluent Spanish speaker, due to his travels in South America — pretends to not hear. Similar to he pretends to not care about a lot in any respect, Coogan bringing an interesting, barely dishevelled ‘Englishman overseas’ nonchalance to his efficiency. When the coup lastly occurs, and the college is closed for every week, Michell and his Swedish colleague (Björn Gustafsson, whose mild comedic sparring with Coogan is a spotlight) head for neighbouring Uruguay to celebration their troubles away.

It’s right here, whereas attempting to impress an area lady, that Michell comes throughout the hideous sight of an oil spill and several other useless penguins. Seeing that one continues to be alive, he’s persuaded to take it again to his resort and clear it up, after which he tries to return it to the ocean. When it gained’t go away his aspect, Michell seemingly has no alternative however to smuggle the fowl again into Argentina, the place he secrets and techniques it in his school condo. It’s, after all, not lengthy earlier than penguin — which Sophia names Juan Salvador after the Spanish model of novel Jonathan Livingston Seagull — has grow to be a key a part of school life; inspiring the boys at school, swimming within the pool, and even changing into a therapist of kinds to the troubled Michell and others. These moments with Juan Salvador (performed by each actual and animatronic penguins) are performed to heavy-handedly stirring impact, propelled by Frederico Jusid’s overbearing Spanish-inspired rating.

Michell’s charming memoir (whose audiobook is gently narrated by Invoice Nighy) saved its focus tightly on his experiences throughout the faculty, observing occasions exterior its partitions and his transient brushes with the navy from one take away. But right here, screenwriter Pope (who wrote earlier Coogan automobiles together with Stan & Ollie and Philomena) makes an attempt to carry the 2 worlds firmly collectively, leading to  a number of diversions from the guide — and actuality. Whereas the precise Thomas Michell was a frewheeling lad in his 20s throughout his time in Argentina, this model is a weathered, world-weary man in his late 50s who’s working from his personal painful previous. 

That tweak, after all, makes the character a ripe vessel for change and, after Sophia is kidnapped off the road in entrance of him (a personality and occasion created for the movie) he realises he can not ignore what is occurring round him. The screenplay has him straight confronting one in every of Sophia’s kidnappers, politely imploring for her launch in an an excruciatingly earnest style, in a very blunt-edged, tone-deaf instance of dramatic licence. 

It was, maybe, troublesome to inform this explicit story with out together with its political context; to take action might need been to draw one other sort of criticism. However in its dedication to take care of a shiny, upbeat tone all through — even when coping with an occasion that, as a closing sombre title card tells us, noticed ‘over 30,000 individuals killed or disappeared’ — The Penguin Classes proves to be neither fish nor fowl.