Observing the most basic rules of mystery thrillers (keep the plot simple and don’t cheat the audience), director Alice Troughton’s “The Lesson” (originally titled: “The Tutor”) isn’t likely to win any year-end awards, but in a summer overflowing with hyper-stylized sequels, thunderously blunt action flicks, and politically-correct animated “message” movies, it is a welcomed throwback.
The always dependable character actor Richard E. Grant co-stars as J.M. Sinclair, a smug, full-of-himself British novelist who, nonetheless, is the idol of budding Irish writer Liam Sommers (Daryl McCormack).
So taken and in awe of Sinclair is Sommers, that he based his thesis paper on him. This has caught not only Sinclair’s attention but also that of his wife Helene (Julie Delpy), an artist and curator, a woman who possesses all the warmth and approachability of dry ice.
Two Firsts
“The Lesson” is the first-produced screenplay by Alex MacKeith, and the debut directing feature from Ms. Troughton, best known for her work on the British TV shows “Doctor Who,” Torchwood,” “The Sarah Jane Adventures,” and “Merlin.” The pair is perfectly suited for each other, as neither is particularly interested in giving away too much too soon.Save for the fleeting (yet indispensable) prologue and epilogue bookends taking place in auditoriums, the entire story takes place at a modern English countryside estate.
Slow Burn, Soft Boil
In tandem with the precise and exacting contributions of cinematographer Anna Patarakina and editor Paulo Pandolpho, Mr. MacKeith and Ms. Troughton craft the slow burn narrative with a soft-boil build-up along the lines of “Sleuth” (1972), “Crooked House” (2017), “Vertigo” (1957), and “Ordinary People” (1980).
The tight-lipped, frequently barbed, perpetually white-knuckle collective demeanor of the three members of the Sinclair family initially has a devastating, potentially crippling effect on the not quite eager-to-please outsider Sommers, yet he acclimates and adjusts remarkably well. Truth be told, Sommers’s “never let them see you sweat” quiet confidence and flat-out refusal to metaphorically cower to his classist employers actually gets them to loosen up and reveal far more than they want or should.
As much as I hate to do so, I’m deducting the movie a single rating point for two reasons.
During the prologue, the Sinclair character speaks a line that ultimately proves to be a huge spoiler. This is compounded as it is also included in the trailer. While impossible to avoid while watching the movie, it is advisable to resist viewing the trailer if at all possible. It is a most obvious example of stealing one’s own thunder, and I’m beyond miffed as to why the studio chose to include it in the trailer.
An Acting Clinic
As far as the acting is concerned, “The Lesson” puts on a clinic. Sinclair is textbook Grant—paranoid and high-strung, but with a mischievous, self-aware, and knowing wink. Ms. Delpy’s Helene could be any, or all, of the arms-length calculating blond leading ladies (Grace Kelly, Tippi Hedren, and Kim Novak) from Alfred Hitchcock’s classic era films had they been written as a slightly older, fuller-figured, artistically leaning, intellectual hausfraus.Mr. McMillan’s Bertie is so insolent and spoiled at the start that you’d like to take him behind a woodshed and give him “what-fer,” but with just a single, one-second smiling image in the epilogue, he earns his keep and proves to be the one character with the highest arc.
Woven throughout is Ellis (Crispin Letts), the monotone, expressionless family butler who is privy to everything, yet avoids all of the archetypal “the butler did it” clichés, and does so with a straight face.
In the end the movie totally belongs to Mr. McCormack. The son of an African-American father and an Irish mother, Mr. McCormack made quite the splash last year in his feature debut as the title character (a gigolo) opposite Emma Thompson in the criminally overlooked “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande.”
Any director that doesn’t consider Mr. McCormack in any role in any movie they’re planning to make will be making a huge mistake. Mr. McCormack has everything it takes to be a future screen legend.
