“We had to kick against the cuteness at all times,” Steve Coogan, the star of “The Penguin Lessons,” admits. But when you’re appearing opposite an adorable, feathered scene-stealer, that’s a pretty tall order.
“The Penguin Lessons,” which debuts at this year’s Toronto Film Festival, follows a cynical teacher at a posh boarding school in Argentina in the 1970s, whose conscience is reawakened after he rescues a oil-soaked penguin from a beach. And that is a real live bird appearing opposite Coogan, and not some CGI creation. In the bulk of the film, the actor appears opposite two penguins, Papa and Richard, which required him to spend weeks getting to know his co-stars before filming ever started. In a few complicated sequences, the production used a puppet or a robot penguin — but the rest of the time, it’s that dynamic duo on the screen.
” I regularly visited the house where the penguins were living,” Coogan says. “I would talk to them and hold them, so they’d become familiar with me. By the time I was on set, I was comfortable picking them up. By the time we said goodbye, it was very emotional. They disarm you. Human beings are too inward-looking and preoccupied with things that aren’t important. These birds remind you not to take everything so seriously.”
But “The Penguin Lessons” isn’t just an exercise in uplift. The movie is set in a turbulent period in Argentina’s history, one that saw the country ruled by a military dictatorship that tortured and killed political dissidents. Coogan’s character begins “The Penguin Lessons” just trying to keep his head down. After the bird reminds him of the empathy he lost touch with, he starts to encourage his young pupils to reacquaint themselves with their moral compass, and to use their privilege for good.
“The Penguin Lessons” was directed by Peter Cattaneo, an expert at mixing humor and heart in films like “The Full Monty,” and produced outside the studio system.
“You don’t often see penguins in films about human rights abuses,” Coogan notes. “If this was produced by a major studio, you would have lost all that. The penguins would have been used in a much more manipulative way.”
Working alongside the birds kept Coogan on his toes. “Fortunately I’ve done a lot of improvisation in my career, so I know not to freeze when animals aren’t behaving as planned. You lean into it instead of pushing back against it. That can lead to some of the best moments.”
Source Agencies
