There’s something quite magnetic about films staging a curmudgeonly man being forced out of his comfort zone. The habits and attitude are established, a dose of humour is sprinkled to ensure he isn’t immediately detested, and a soft spot is found. Enter The Penguin Lessons, a rightfully named dramedy based on Tom Michell’s memoir of the same name, in which during a stint teaching at a private all boys’ school in Argentina in 1976, he reluctantly rescued a penguin from an oil spill and brought it back with him to the classroom.
Steve Coogan is excellent as Michell, disillusioned, reserved and just a tad standoffish – he has come to teach, and that’s all, defined time and again by his unwillingness to act. When he and a woman he has met dancing in Uruguay walk past his future pet, still alive amid a sea of dead penguins, he is happy to leave it behind and let nature take its course. It is only to impress his date that he brings it to his hotel and nurses it back to health. From there, Michell navigates bringing it across the border and hiding it from the school’s headmaster Buckle (Jonathan Pryce) – it is not long before Michell lets his colleagues in on his secret, including heartbroken physics professor Tapio (Bjorn Gustafsson) and the school cleaners, Maria (Vivian El Jaber) and her granddaughter Sofia (Alfonsina Carrocio), a political activist protesting the coup d’etat. The penguin is given a name, Juan Salvador, and soon he is assisting Michell in the classroom, bringing a bullied boy out of his shell, encouraging the students to question poetry, and offering an ear to those men struggling with the weight of being.
Here is a film that subtly plays between the feel good and existential, leaning into its feathered friend without making a crutch out of it. In fact, at times, the penguin is almost forgotten, focusing instead on a rather superficial portrait of political upheaval in Argentina. But The Penguin Lessons is just as self-effacing as Michell in this sense – the generic dangerous streets, corrupt police, disappearing civilians is as far as it goes, though they – and Sofia – end up being central to the narrative. Of course, it is only a backdrop, allowing Michell – a foreigner caught up in another country’s turmoil – to recognise the power of action, but it certainly would have benefited from a slightly more fleshed out approach. Despite this, The Penguin Lessons builds up meaning elsewhere – the word “lesson” is certainly more present than “penguin”, for instance. While this might be perceived as an animal-centric film reminiscent of the likes of Free Willy or Marley & Me, the real story is about Michell’s changing attitude and gradual renewal of optimism. Coogan is wonderful from grumpy beginnings to a softer approach (reminiscent of Jack Nicholson’s Melvin in As Good As It Gets), and for a 12A, there are some rather unexpected comments that deserve a laugh out loud. Though the ending is perhaps a little too saccharine (I wonder whether the memoir is so Hollywoodian dramatic), The Penguin Lessons nevertheless has a warming seriousness to it, paired with Coogan’s humour and a genuinely moving supporting cast.
