Steve Coogan has made plenty of films far from the days of Alan Partridge, where the entirety of TV personalities was lampooned and Coogan was among the top comedians in the UK. Now going into stories with a bit more seriousness, Coogan and fellow collaborator Jeff Pope have done well with their Oscar-nominated work Philomena, the biopic Stan & Ollie, and the docudrama mini-series The Reckoning with Coogan as child abuser Jimmy Saville. With Pope adapting The Penguin Lessons, Coogan again goes with a true story under the backdrop of a country’s darkest period in their history. 

The film begins with archive footage of Buenos Aires’ daily life as the military dictatorship is about to begin and have its firm grasp on the country. It is 1976 and Tom Michell arrives at his new job as an English teacher at a boarding school led by Timothy Buckle (Jonathan Pryce). If you look closely, you’d think Colonel Sanders was running the place but with a British accent. Michell is instructed to avoid speaking about it – Argentina’s “Dirty War” killed/disappeared an estimated 30,000 people, as stated at the end of the film – and keep focused on helping the students. When the school is shut down for a week, Michell and his Finnish colleague Tapio (Björn Gustafsson) go to Uruguay.

During this period of R&R, Tom and Tapio go dancing, and Tom walks along the beach where he finds a living penguin covered in crude oil. After cleaning him up, Tom takes it back to the beach, where the penguin comes back out towards him. Reluctantly, Tom takes the penguin, who he names Juan Salvador, back to Argentina and to the school where he isn’t allowed to have any animals. However, Juan captures the attention of his students and inspires them more, as well as Sophia (Alfonsina Carrocio) and her grandmother (Vivian El Jaber), both of whom are cleaners at the school. 

It is a tough balancing act knowing that this fact-based story from Michell’s memoir (albeit he was in his 20s when it occurred and was rewritten for a character in his 50s) also deals with the horrors of Argentina’s state terrorist regime. As with neighboring Latin American countries, the military is taking over to fight communist insurgents; for “security;” anyone with a sniff of a link to them is grabbed off the street by plainclothes officers in unmarked cars. Citizens get the message to keep their heads down and not talk about it. The issue here is that this is too heavy while telling a whimsical penguin story with the horrors of the disappeared which becomes evident at a pivotal point of the film. Michell, a world-weary fellow, is reminded from the start of how dangerous it is to be subversive, even a little bit. He has a gun to his face at the beginning of the film and will face them multiple times later.

The comedy that is dropped in is timely, giving its characters a breather from the harsh realities of daily life. Juan Salvador is the bright light for everyone, smiling at the animal’s adorable waddle and unusual place in the school. Coogan’s dry humor is a perfect antidote for approaching the issues with casual sarcasm and director Peter Cattaneo (The Full Monty) does not get carried away with the camera direction in trying to catch all the horror, but more of the beauty and the empathy of Tom Michell’s story. The Penguin Lessons is an odd hybrid of comedy and real-life tragedy, but there is enough hope at the end where the heart is not overwhelmed with the real-life fear that many felt and saw during this sad chapter.  

3 stars

Follow me on BluSky: @briansusbielles.bsky.social