Steve Coogan in a scene from The Penguin Lessons.Andrea Resmini/Sony Pictures Classics
- The Penguin Lessons
- Directed by Peter Cattaneo
- Written by Jeff Pope and Tom Michell
- Starring Steve Coogan, Bjorn Gustafsson and Jonathan Pryce
- Classification PG; 110 minutes
- Opens in select theatres March 28
Critic’s Pick
You have heard this heartwarming tale before: a grouchy old bachelor is rescued from his self-imposed isolation by circumstances that force him to adopt a creature smaller and cuter than himself. In its turn, The Penguin Lessons is rescued from the banality of this formula by three things. The first is its setting: Argentina in 1976 just as the newly installed military junta launches the Dirty War against leftists, intellectuals and students. The second is the comic talent of Steve Coogan playing the grouch in question. And the third, as you will have guessed from the title, is a penguin.
Coogan plays Tom Michell (a real person on whose memoir the film is based), an unhappy Brit reduced to teaching English poetry to uncomprehending Argentinian teens in a stuffy institution that aims to reproduce the “public” schools of his homeland. He has only just arrived when the military coup closes the school for a week, so he takes the opportunity for some recreation in Uruguay. There, he rescues a penguin from an oil slick, not out of altruism but to impress a woman he’s met in a bar. The penguin declines to return to the sea and follows Tom all the way back to Argentina and the school.
Initially, the penguin remains hidden in Tom’s rooms but eventually it becomes a useful companion for calming rowdy teens and comforting their lonely teachers. Things at the school are looking up. So far, so cute, but there’s a darker subplot here as the local fishmonger who has been supplying the penguin disappears while a young woman who works at the school is rounded up on the street. Tom watches silently as she is bundled into a car by thugs but begins to question the English school’s policy of non-involvement in Argentinian politics. Turns out the oil-drenched penguin is not the only creature challenging Tom’s determination to remain on the sidelines.
Coogan brings a delightfully sardonic deadpan to the role of the bemused bystander observing the antics of penguins, adolescents and military dictatorships.Andrea Resmini/Sony Pictures Classics
For his part, director Peter Cattaneo, master of the feel-good genre, (The Full Monty; Military Wives) will only go so far down the dark side of his metaphor, slipping in a shout-out to the mothers of the Plaza de Mayo so the film can end on an upbeat.
Coogan brings a delightfully sardonic deadpan to the role of the bemused bystander observing the antics of penguins, adolescents and … military dictatorships. The actor grows seedier as he ages, replacing the suave charm of the narcissistic actor he played in The Trip and its many offshoots with a more brittle form of self-involvement, a frailty that does allow for the possibility of empathy that the political plot demands. So, he finesses the tricky task Cattaneo sets him here, sounding the deeper notes in the midst of the comedy. He is well-backed by Vivian El Jaber as the school’s no-nonsense housekeeper goading him into action; Jonathan Pryce playing the fusty headmaster doing the reverse and Bjorn Gustafsson as a fellow teacher, an overly eager Finn less capable than Tom of hiding a broken heart.
There are unstated reasons that the Argentinian elite is sending its Spanish-speaking boys to an English school. Although the country was never a British colony, the British were the economically dominant immigrant group in the 19th century, a social status that was not truly challenged until the Falklands war. Yet it was that event that finally unseated the junta and brought democracy to Argentina. All these colonial politics lie far beyond the scope of this touching film with its simple message about the need for empathy, both human and ornithological.
