One April, you embark upon your annual spring-cleaning. You make a pot of tea, put on the radio, roll up your sleeves and clamber into the loft. Just as you thought: it is piled high with dusty boxes and random clutter. After you have been sorting cases for a while, you open one and chance upon a grainy home-video from the 1970s. You have no idea what is on the tape, but, curiosity aroused, you go downstairs to the living room, put it into your VHS player and press “play.” What will it show? The video starts. You see a tame penguin in an outdoor swimming pool on a bright, sunny day, with dozens of school pupils gathered at one end in encouragement. Memories from a period much earlier in your life come rushing back. You were teaching English to rich pupils at a private school in Argentina, some years after your daughter was killed. You were in Uruguay for the weekend, walking along the beach with an unavailable married woman you had just met, and came across this pitiful penguin, apparently the only one still alive, covered in thick, treacly, black tar from an oil slick and completely stuck in the sand. You returned to your hotel carrying the penguin, and cleaned it up; but when you tried to release it back to the sea, it wouldn’t let you, so it came to live with you at the school. You decide to try writing the story up as a book. The book is made into a film. You have given us all wonderful gift: “The Penguin Lessons” (Lionsgate), showing now at the Montrose Playhouse.
“The Penguin Lessons” is a gentle, graceful and beguiling film, full of gorgeous outside shots bathed in warm yellow light. It makes progress slowly, just as the teacher, Tom Michell, played by Steve Coogan, does with the penguin. The filmmakers’ delightful idea is to craft their relationship as that of friend-to-friend, and sometimes even as patient-to-therapist, rather than (more obviously) of owner-to-pet. This strategy is invariably successful, and is aided by another fruitful decision, which is to thoroughly embed two Argentinian characters in the major arc of the developing plot. This is accomplished by an early scene on Tom’s balcony. He has bought sprats for the penguin to eat but the penguin refuses, until Tom’s housekeeper, Maria, played by Vivian El Jaber, and her grand-daughter, Sofia, played by Alfonsina Carrocio, realise that the penguin needs to be treated playfully rather than sternly.
The abundant family-friendly comedy is supplied first by the absurd idea of a pet penguin, and second, by casting Steve Coogan as Tom. There are some hilarious scenes as Tom returns across the border from Uruguay, carrying his penguin in a shopping bag. Never has the expression, “I will arrest you” been so funny. Plus the script cleverly uses Tom’s Britishness: unsurprisingly, Steve Coogan aces the slightly jaded, just-so cynical, knowingly sarcastic, middle-aged teacher—a familiar, safe, comforting character. He seems to be going through the motions of teaching in exchange for privacy, a plane ticket, and free accommodation. Hilariously enough, as he (fails to) teach the concept of sarcasm to his class, they throw paper-airplanes around, paying zero attention (he isn’t a very good teacher). However, in a moment of inspiration during another failing lesson, he wonders if his penguin could double-up as an unpaid teaching aide—perhaps this will get the privileged sons of the rich and powerful to pay attention? I was intrigued by the scenes shot by a camera positioned at ground level, looking up, earlier on in the film, as if from a “penguin’s-eye” view (early scenes on Tom’s balcony are great examples). Why? As I guessed, this was quite deliberately laying the groundwork for one of the most insightful scenes of all—an idea that could only be fully implemented later on in the film. Making the pupils lie flat on their backs on the classroom floor, Tom gets them to see the world for the first time from penguin-height, surely the position of the poor, propertyless or disappeared.
Major parts for Maria and Sofia represent this opposing social and economic class, adding Argentina’s political violence against the socialist resistance to the story. “The Penguin Lessons” is not a violent film (it caries a 12-A certificate, and there were lots of children at the Playhouse when I saw it). What happens to Sofia during her “disappearance” is not shown. But the threat is always there (for instance, a bomb explodes in the nearby town just as Tom arrives at school for the first time). Several important scenes around the outdoor market show the presence of armed military police in the background. The trip to Uruguay comes about after the school’s temporary closure in a time of increased political unrest. Inside the head-teacher’s office, too, 100% of the political power is on the side of the governing regime, which pays the fees of the boys and the salaries of the teachers. Jonathan Pryce plays the tricky Head with the enthusiasm that perhaps only an ex-Bond-villain could bring to the part.
A beautiful film like “The Penguin Lessons” nimbly illustrates how to play a humble, maybe even anonymous, part in caring for the powerless non-human life on our shared planet. Collectively, putting out a garden-feeder to provide for a handful of sparrows, or cleaning up the beach, or visiting the Montrose Basin Visitors Centre to watch the wading-birds and leave a donation, adds up to much, much more than “doing our bit.” We become the change that we hear others simply talking about. Whatever his initial motives, Tom picked up that one penguin, cleaned it up and restored its life. He could have followed his instincts to leave it there, as it will perish anyway, and it’s best to just accept that the death of sea-life is the natural, inevitable consequence of (in this case) fossil-fuel extraction. But he doesn’t. And I found that very inspiring.
Adam Poole
19 April 2025
If you are interested in viewing this screening, please book your tickets here
