“Penguin lessons” offer their own accidental lessons

The British make a comfortable cinema, like few others, and Peter Cattaneo has directed more than his part, starting with “The Full Monty” in 1997 and has slightly inclined. His last, “The Penguin Lessons”, shares with his 2019 drama “Military Spouses”, the challenge of creating an elevating silk purse, full of audience, from the ear of the world’s political complexities. When it works, it works, but in the new movie it doesn’t work as often as it should.

Is Argentina in 1976, and the army is preparing for a coup – enough capricious to you? In this Tinderbox comes Tom Michell (Steve Coogan), a British Lisate school teacher, who was employed to force English lessons in the brain of the leading class to A Buenos Aires Academy. The country is breaking down, but while the school director of the school (Jonathan Pryce, Irosit) warns the new instructor: “We try to keep us away.”

But the penguin, do you ask yourself? During a week of beach vacation in Uruguay, Michell and a woman he meets at a bar (a charming, small, save a Magellanic penguin from an oil and, once the woman is leaving, she is unhappy to the bird, despite all the attempts to get rid of it. With a soft center, and the “penguin lessons” are a lot in his wheelchair, while the hero brings his new friend back through habits and within the school limits, where, nicknamed Juan Salvador, he remains a secret for not long.

This is adorable, but the political background of the film is pushing more and more painful in the foreground. Classically film, Michell takes his neck for anyone until he finds new friends at school, including a bracelet teacher (Björn Gustafsson) and the two school cleaning ladies, old Maria (Vivian El Jaber) and her left -handed granddaughter (Alfonsina Carrocio). Then one of the characters is grabbed by a crowded street in front of Michell with men with weapons and sunglasses. Will it intervene? Would you like it?

When it is said and done everything, the “penguin lessons” mean to find the courage to rise in the face of injustice in your own danger – only with the penguin rooster, rather than with blood. Jeff Pope’s scenario, adapted from Tom Michell’s real memory of 2016, adds this fictionalized subplot to the story and includes a pro -form tragedy in the teacher’s past to continue. The film recognizes the 30,000 people who disappeared during Argentina ‘Dirty war“And she places her grandmother with real life Mothers Plaza 25 by MayoBut the solemnity is low by the brilliance of the scenario and the wisdom of Juan Salvador while winning over the hearts of all, except those people with weapons. It is the kind of film in which one of the main characters is taken into custody overnight and appears with bruises from which the film producers look discreetly. Hell of torture on Box Office.

Will you be moved? Possibly; I was sometimes and sometimes against my better judgment. Coogan is the only real man here, but, as in “Philomena” (2013), he raises the procedures regarding the power of his decency CERMUPGENLY. The “penguin lessons” will be to the liking of the type of audiences who like to travel the world in comfortAs those PBS commercials for Viking River cruises say, but accidentally offers those uncomfortable food audiences. Cattaneo captures Argentina of the 1970s at a classic “the first came for the socialists”, one that could feel familiar once the loans roll and check the news flow on your smartphone.

It Do you intervene? No amount of penguins makes this question decrease easier.

PG-13. At the theaters in the area. A strong language, some sexual references and thematic elements. 110 minutes.

Ty Burr is the author of the Bulletin of the movie Ty Burr watch list at tyburrswatchlist.com.