Rated: PG
Directed by: Michael Engler
Script Written by: Julian Fellowes
Based on the Novel by: Laura Moriarty
Produced by: Greg Clark, Victoria Hill, Luca Scalisi, Rose Ganguzza, Kelly Carmichael, Greg Hamilton
Starring: Elizabeth McGovern, Haley Lu Richardson, Géza Röhrig, Campbell Scott, Victoria Hill, Miranda Otto, Robert Fairchild, Matt McGrath, Blythe Danner, Jayne Houdyshell and Jonathan Walker.
‘What do you want to be Louise?’
‘To be the best dancer in the world.’
The Chaperone explores the story of the silent film super-star, Louise Brooks.
I think just about everyone would recognise her flapper style and short dark bob.
After her dancing and acting career faded and failed, Louise Brooks disappeared from the spotlight, only to re-invent herself and remerge as the best-selling author of her biography, Lulu in Hollywood (1982).
She writes of her life in New York, mentioning a middle-aged chaperone who escorted her when she first arrived.
No-one knows who this chaperone was.
Laura Moriarty has written a novel exploring the idea of the character, The Chaperone. And a script was written, reuniting the director, writer and star from the multi-award winning TV series, Downton Abby.
Set in the 1920s, we see Louise as a young girl living in Wichita, Kansas.
At fifteen, Louise is accepted into a dance academy in New York.
Her mother (Victoria Hill) too busy with her own pursuits doesn’t have time to take her.
And young girl can’t go to New York on her own.
When Norma (Elizabeth McGovern) sees Louise dance after over-hearing the need of a chaperone, she volunteers.
The main focus of the film is on Norma – her escape from a stale marriage and her need to find her birth mother: ‘I love you, I really do,’ her husband tells her as she leaves. ‘That’s nice,’ she replies.
Norma was an orphan. And the orphanage she grew up in is in New York, unfortunately named: The New York Home for Friendless Girls.
Haley Lu Richardson as Louise is full of life and rebellion and fun, whereas Elizabeth McGovern as Norma plays the prudish and sincere lady. This contrast between the two is where the film develops – the life lessons learned from the other as each character struggles to find themselves.
What I found difficult to digest was Norma trying to deviate from her character, to be seductive, even if it was fake.
The romance between the chaperone and German immigrant, Joseph (Géza Röhrig) felt forced and strained. Much like the attempt to introduce the need of forward-thinking regarding issues of racism and homosexuality
What I enjoyed was seeing Louise dance and her struggles to be independent. And although, annoying and precocious, there’s something exciting about the gifted girl that made me want to know more.
Instead, we get the struggles of the chaperone and the lessons she learns from the young and free dancer.
Which didn’t make a bad film – although, that seduction scene was pretty bad – but more a period drama. And like Louise says, ‘I don’t like historical novels.’
And I don’t like watered-down versions of an imagined biography.