'The Penguin Lessons' Teach Timely Truths in the Face of Fascism

Sony Pictures Classics’ The Penguin Lessons is an adaptation of Tom Michell’s 2016 memoir of the same name about his teaching career in Buenos Aires in 1976 and how his unexpected adoption of a wild penguin changed his life and the lives of the students and teachers around him. Comedian and actor Steve Coogan (...with Alan Patridge) plays Michell, as directed by Peter Cattaneo (The Full Monty). Although the film starts as awkwardly and unfocused as a penguin tromping across the asphalt, by the film’s halfway mark, the story and themes finally kick in, and everyone involved manages to achieve a rather meaningful story about the necessity of connection, courage, and care in the face of fascism.  

As warned, be prepared for a wrong flipper forward opening, featuring an oddly jaunty score by composer Federico Jusid (A Gentleman in Moscow) playing over stock footage of life in Buenos Aires, Argentina, right before General Jorge Videla’s military coup in 1976. Tonally, it’s off because the filmmakers don’t do enough to establish the context of that calm before the storm, either with historical title cards or exposition to set up the imminent coup for those who aren’t up on their South American history. It just drops Coogan’s professor Michell at the gates of St. George’s College for boys with a face full of concern. 

As a traveling British professor, Michell’s current gig is with this private school for wealthy families, situated in the city's suburbs where bombings can be seen in the distance, and fresh graffiti dries on the school’s exterior wall. Inside is a protected nook of academia for the nation’s future leaders (Socialist or Junta) run by a fastidious and politically agnostic British Headmaster Buckle (Jonathan Pryce). 

Michell is tasked with teaching O Levels English to the native Spanish-speaking high school students, but it's clear that no one is into it. Both the teacher and his students softly ignore one another until the coup happens, and then the staff is given a week off to let everything shake out. It’s a disjointed and meandering connection of scenes. Then, Michell heads to Uruguay for some dancing and female company with a recently dumped professor, Tapio (Björn Gustafsson), in tow. At a local dance club, Michell connects with Karina, and their strong chemistry eventually leads them to walk the beach. 

They come across several penguins that have died in an offshore oil spill. One is still alive, and Karina is adamant that they take it back to his hotel room and save it, which Michell grudgingly does, hoping it will lead to her staying over. She does not. However, the now clean and grateful penguin has imprinted on Michell and follows him everywhere he goes. 

Border crossing agents and local police of 1976 didn’t seem to care much about wild animal policies or endangered species trafficking because Michell found himself on a bus back to Argentina with a bird in a bag and a problem of what to do with it. As anyone would expect, the penguin is The Penguin Lessons’ savior, both for his charming screen presence and for how it forces Michell to connect to the people around him. His house cleaners, the older Maria (Vivian El Jaber) and her younger granddaughter Sofia (Alfonsia Carrocio), are so enamored with the bird that they name him Juan Salvador, the Spanish translation of Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull. The little guy even waddles out to Michell’s classroom and gives the uninterested boys something to connect to with their standoffish teacher. 

Like the webbing between Juan’s flippers, Michell also connects to this community where his penguin pal has cobbled together just by his very countenance. The teacher becomes a student to the power of this bird’s soulful eyes just sharing space with his circle, and in turn, it opens him up to finally seeing the coup’s impact on the citizens around him. From the local fishmonger who sells him Juan’s meals to Sofia, whose resistance work gets her picked up and disappeared from her family, terrible things are happening that he ignores but then can’t anymore. Because of Maria’s worry and subsequent participation in the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo protests, Michell participates in life again and tries to help those who helped him with his now beloved Juan Salvador. 

The last half of Jeff Pope’s screenplay expresses the stakes of the societal upheaval of the time and makes it consequential to Michell’s own evolution. There’s no doubt that every flippity-flop made by Juan Salvador emotionally hijacks the hearts of the viewers, but his presence is never cloying nor devolves into the anthropomorphic. He’s a bird that happens to be a natural unifier, which is everything Michell is trying to avoid as a human being. But Coogan does an excellent job subtly letting us take that journey of change along with him in a stoic but affecting way. In the end, Coogan and his bird co-star give very moving performances that softly have something to say about the power of our connections with the natural world and what they can bring forth from us. 

As for the rest of their ensemble, El Jaber does some excellent work humanizing the political ramifications of her failing country through her plight with her granddaughter. But the early awkward charm of Gustafsson’s Tapio is lost in the second half, which is a disappointing waste of his character’s potential. Plus, a lot more could have been done with the student characters who never get much of a chance to pop individually. But overall, if you can get past the rickety first half, The Penguin Lessons lands with a lot more grace than a flightless bird would have you believe. 

The Penguin Lessons is playing in U.S. theaters starting Friday, March 28, 2025.