Steve Coogan’s dry wit meets unexpected tenderness in this tale of an English teacher and his feathered friend.
By James Verniere/Boston Movie News
Steve Coogan cuts such a distinctive figure in modern cinema. Twice nominated for an Academy Award for “Philomena” (2013), Coogan is probably best known in the States for supplying the voice of Silas Ramsbottom in the “Despicable Me” series and for those “Trip to” films he’s made opposite fellow comic actor Rob Brydon starting in 2010. Of course, he also turned in memorable performances in “Tristram Shandy” (2005), “Hamlet 2” (2008), the aforementioned “Philomena,” “Stan & Ollie” (2018) and now “The Penguin Lessons.” Based on a 2016 memoir by Tom Michell adapted by Coogan’s sometime writing partner Jeff Pope (“The Lost King”) and directed by London-born Peter Cattaneo of “The Full Monty” fame (or infamy), “The Penguin Lessons” tells the somewhat twee, fish-out-of-water tale of a Brit transplanted to Argentina in 1976 to take a job teaching English at a posh college for wealthy boys headed to university. “Muertos Poets Society,” anyone?
Singleton Tom Michell (Coogan) finds himself in a country where the military has staged a recent coup. But more important at first is settling in under the supervision of the headmaster (a perfectly supercilious Jonathan Pryce). Michell is given comfortable housing in the college with a terrace (no pets allowed). He is befriended (sort of) by the Nordic science teacher (a delightfully strange Bjorn Gustafsson). Tom’s privileged students include Diego (David Herrero), who is bullied, and Ramiro (Hugo Fuertes), who is funny. Notably, Tom speaks Spanish (as does Coogan), although he speaks only English in class, and the first word he writes on the blackboard is “sarcasm,” something with which Coogan is intimately familiar. You might say it courses through his veins.
After a night of tango dancing with a beautiful Argentine woman (Micaela Breque), Tom and the woman come across a male penguin covered in oil and barely moving on the beach. They clean it up. The penguin ends up on Tom’s terrace, where it eats fresh sprats bought from a nearby fish store owner.
Tom brings the penguin to class to get his students’ attention, which they do not give him freely. His students are enchanted. Tom talks a lot about such things as metaphors, and it becomes clear that the penguin, eventually dubbed Juan Salvador by Sofia (Alfonsina Carrocio), the adopted daughter of Tom’s maid (a very serious Vivian El Jaber), is the metaphoric stand-in for Tom’s late daughter. The penguin also becomes a way to connect with the people Tom has pushed away since his daughter’s death. The animal is in ways both obvious and mysterious Tom’s “salvador” (aka savior).
Coogan makes fine use of his natural tendency to be dry, droll, witty, cynical, and yes, sarcastic as Tom. He laments that his dancing partner leaves him with “no sex, and a penguin.” He tries to teach his class John Masefield’s 1916 longing poem “Sea-Fever.” Tom will be advised not to teach the work of the anti-war poet-soldier Wilfred Owen. In an odd bit of coincidence, “The Penguin Lessons” recalls Walter Salles’ Oscar-winning 1970s-set “I’m Still Here” (2024) when Sofia is grabbed off the street as Tom watches, frozen in fear, by the military. Tom does not try to interfere and is stricken by guilt. The zoo finally agrees to take the penguin, but the zoo recalls the prisons that Tom imagines Sofia and thousands of others are being held. He will not put Juan Salvador in such a place.
Will Tom summon the courage to (paraphrase Percy Bysshe Shelley) rise like a lion and confront one of Sofia’s captors when he sees him on the street? Tom’s elderly maid becomes radicalized. What other miracles will the penguin bring to pass? Will at least one of the desaparecidos return? Will Coogan, refusing to heed the warning of W.C. Fields, be upstaged by a penguin? Some of “The Penguin Lessons” is predictable. But the film remains, for the most part, a very pleasant surprise.
‘The Penguin Lessons’
Rating: PG-13 for profanity, thematic elements
Cast: Steve Coogan, Jonathan Pryce, Bjorn Gustafsson
Director: Peter Cattaneo
Writer: Jeff Pope, Tom Michell
Running Time: 110 minutes
Where to Watch: AMC Boston Common, AMC Methuen 20, AMC Liberty Tree Mall 20 and other suburban theaters
Grade: B+
Boston Movie News 