The Kindergarten Teacher (2018)

11 Monday Mar 2019

Tags

Child prodigy, Drama, Gael García Bernal, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Michael Chernus, Parker Sevak, Poetry, Remake, Review, Sara Colangelo

D: Sara Colangelo / 96m

Cast: Maggie Gyllenhaal, Parker Sevak, Gael García Bernal, Michael Chernus, Anna Baryshnikov, Rosa Salazar, Daisy Tahan, Sam Jules, Ajay Naidu, Samrat Chakrabarti

Lisa Spinelli (Gyllenhaal) has been a kindergarten teacher for twenty years. She has a family of her own – husband Grant (Chernus), and two teenage children, Josh (Jules) and Lainie (Tahan) – but seems more at ease with the children in her class. In her spare time she attends a weekly poetry class run by Simon (Bernal), but though she tries her best, her poems are regarded as derivative and uninspired. One day, one of her pupils, Jimmy (Sevak), recites a poem that Lisa notes down. Believing it to be both beautiful and profound, she uses it as her own at her next poetry class, where it is well received by everyone. Enjoying this new recognition, Lisa takes more of an interest in Jimmy and tries to ensure she doesn’t miss any more spontaneous poems he might come up with. Certain that he’s a child prodigy, Lisa encourages Jimmy to let her know when he has a new verse. Soon, she is attempting to insert herself more and more into his life in order to foster his talent, but it leads to her making some very unwise decisions…

A remake of the 2014 Israeli movie of the same name, The Kindergarten Teacher is that rare remake that is just as good, if not better, than the original. Featuring a bravura performance from Gyllenhaal, the movie tackles its theme of intellectual obsession with a rigour and a complexity that ensures the material retains a number of layers for the viewer to explore even as more and more of Lisa’s motives are revealed. At first, she seems to be exploiting Jimmy’s talent for her own benefit, getting praise at her poetry class, and in time, receiving Simon’s lustful attentions. But as the story unfolds, and we learn more about her, we discover that Lisa is unhappy, with her life which seems to be stuck in a rut, with her marriage which has become stale, and with her children who are striking out on their own and lack any apparent need for intellectual stimulation, something that appals her deeply. Unable to take control of anything other than her standing in the poetry class (and only by deception), Lisa does her best to be the overseer of Jimmy’s talent, and by doing so, to find a new purpose in her life. And as she does so, she becomes more and more willing to take the kind of risks that will cause her downfall – and yet still be grateful to do so.

Of course, there are moral and ethical dilemmas to be addressed here, and Colangelo, who also wrote the screenplay, covers these issues astutely, and displays a keen awareness of Lisa’s emotional needs, and the maternal instincts that have been dulled by her children’s growing independence. In Jimmy she can see a redemptive opportunity, and by nurturing his talent and making sure it’s not squandered as he gets older, Lisa is able to validate her own sense of self-worth. Gyllenhaal is magnificent as Lisa, giving the kind of assured, dazzlingly authoritative performance that we haven’t seen from her in ages, and she dominates the movie from start to finish, expressing Lisa’s hopes and fears and initial lack of personal direction with a fierce intelligence that makes the character entirely credible throughout, and which makes a last reel admission all the more heartbreaking for its wrenching honesty. There are good supporting performances from Sevak and Chernus (though Bernal is under-utilised), and Colangelo makes good use of an often unsettling score courtesy of Asher Goldschmidt. Some viewers may be expecting a tragic ending to such a tale of obsession, and while there is one, it’s far more tragic for what it implies than what actually occurs, something that adds a chilling grace note to what’s gone before.

Rating: 8/10 – with a powerhouse performance from Gyllenhaal, and a storyline that embraces the emotional turmoil of someone who’s desperate to restore some meaning to their life – however they can – The Kindergarten Teacher is compelling and thought-provoking at the same time; as much about one woman’s skewed maternal instincts as it is about the path she takes to redeem herself in her own eyes, this is a movie that slowly and quietly grabs hold of the viewer and doesn’t let go until the final, haunting shot.

Black Mountain Poets (2015)

30 Monday Jul 2018

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Alice Lowe, Comedy, Dolly Wells, Drama, Jamie Adams, Poetry, Review, The Wilding Sisters, Tom Cullen, Wales

D: Jamie Adams / 85m

Cast: Alice Lowe, Dolly Wells, Tom Cullen, Rosa Robson, Richard Elis, Laura Patch

On the run from the police after trying to steal a JCB, con artist sisters Lisa (Lowe) and Claire (Wells) hijack a car belonging to the Wilding Sisters, well known poets on their way to a poetry gathering in Wales’ Black Mountains. Thinking that it’ll be easy to impersonate a couple of poets, even at a poetry weekend, Lisa and Claire head there as a way of hiding out, and because there’s a large cash prize up for grabs for the best poem. When they arrive at the Poet’s Poetry Society retreat, they’re welcomed with open arms by the other attendees, and particularly by Richard (Cullen), a poet who takes an instant shine to Claire. As the weekend unfolds, the group take to the nearby Black Mountains for a camping trip designed to help them bond and foster their creativity. While Claire and Richard get to know each better, a jealous Lisa does her best to sabotage their growing romance, while both sisters deal with the challenge of providing extemporaneous poetry at the drop of a hat, something that they find is greeted with unexpectedly warm approval…

Something of a mixed bag, Black Mountain Poets is a funny, moody, silly, melancholy, daft, affecting little movie that feels like much of it was improvised, and when it was, nominal scripter (and director) Jamie Adams was happy to go along with it all, and keep most of it in the movie. This might explain why Lowe’s character expresses herself in a weird, meant-to-be-awkwardly-amusing, stream of consciousness style that is at odds with the more reticent musings of the other characters, and why Lisa feels so under-developed. By comparison, Claire – nominally the follower in their relationship – grows in confidence and conviction as the weekend goes on, until it’s clear that she no longer needs Lisa as much as Lisa needs her. This sibling rivalry, an aspect of the material that helps anchor a somewhat rambling narrative, gives the movie some much needed heart in amongst all the poetry nerd jokes and predictable camping disasters. Lowe is a distinct cine-presence, reprising the same type of insecure, regressive character that’s she’s played in many of her recent movies, and it might not be long before she needs to broaden her range, but right now and right here, she’s the sole source of any dramatic friction.

The rest of the cast fit snugly into their roles, with Wells providing a nicely prosaic counterpoint to Lowe’s challenging demeanour, and Cullen content to be the quietly overwhelmed love interest who’s never too sure of himself or his poetry. As his jealous ex-girlfriend, Louise, Robson comes close to stealing the show, her desperate-for-attention behaviour proving ever more incautious and hilarious. But while the performances are mostly impressive, it’s the movie’s uneven tone and pacing that keep it from having a more sincere impact. Switching between comedy and drama with only an occasional acknowledgment that it’s a necessary switch, Adams sometimes tries for satire and pathos in the same scene, but rarely succeeds in pulling it off. Simply put, the material isn’t strong enough to support his ambitions. But there’s still much to enjoy, even if it’s entirely sporadic, from the sisters’ free-form “experimentation” to the running gag of the real Wilding Sisters stranded at the roadside and remaining there out of a misguided belief that someone will “come along”. As a backdrop, the Black Mountains are suitably impressive, but in another unfortunate consequence, the time of year lends itself more to melancholy and emotional reflection than the movie’s attempts at fractious humour or romantic self-empowerment.

Rating: 5/10 – a movie that stumbles too often in its efforts to be affecting and on point, Black Mountain Poets is a British indie comedy with the credentials to be successful, but not the consistency needed to ensure said success; not one to avoid but also not one to expect too much from, it wears its heart on its sleeve but at the expense of a focused, engaging narrative.