This was the first film that I watched at the Manchester Film Festival. I wasn’t sure if I was going to like it, but I am glad I tried something new as this heartwarming tale left me pleasantly surprised and even quite moved. It’s a good example of if you make the effort to watch something out of your comfort zone you can be rewarded.
The Penguin Lessons is an adaptation of the best-selling memoir of the same name by former teacher Tom Michell’s time working and living in Argentina. It’s directed by Peter Cattaneo in an unfussy way, and he lets the story unfold quietly but effectively.
After the screening that I saw it was great to hear from Tom Michell himself in an entertaining Q and A that was super interesting to listen to.
The story begins in Buenos Aries in 1976 just as the dictator Peron is being ousted from power in a military Coup. Tom Michell (Steve Coogan) is the new English teacher at a private school called St Georges, where he teaches the most privileged teenage boys. The headteacher (Jonathan Pryce) explains to him that Argentina is in chaos and warns him to not state his own political views.
During a break in the school term Tom Mitchell goes to Uruguay. He meets a woman and tries to impress her by rescuing a penguin that is stranded on a beach in an oil slick. He and the women bring the penguin back to his hotel room and hose it down, but when he tries to put it back into the ocean the penguin refuses to swim away and keeps following him. For a good 10 minutes in the film, you see him trying to ditch the penguin, who he has named El Salvador, all of which is hilarious.
Slowly he begins to bond with the bird and decides to bring it back with him to the school, even though he has been warned that the establishment has a strict no animal policy.
Tom keeps the penguin in his bathroom and the terrace where he is staying in the school. He takes El Salvador into the classroom and uses him to inspire his students to get there grades up. One example of this is that they lie beneath their desks to see the world from the perceptive of a penguin and they learn poetry by describing the beauty of the bird.
I think what you appreciate about this film is you learn about the human condition through the love between a man and a penguin. The uneasy political setting adds tension along with Toms fractious relationship with the headmaster, but it remains a drama comedy that warms the heart. The fact that it is a true story makes you really wish for a happy ending.
Steve Coogan has great comedic timing and his scenes with Bjorn Gustafsson, who plays another professor from the school and is baffled by Steve’s very British sarcasm and irony is hilarious. Coogan is also very affecting as the lonely academic who finds an unlikely friend and his performance brings a tear to your eye.
Even though The Penguin Lessons is set in Argentina, it is a very British film in its sensibility, and I think it will resonate with UK audiences and may become a word-of-mouth hit.
It will be in cinemas in the UK and Ireland from 18 April.