TMS Movie Review: The Lesson
(Bleecker Street Media)
With melodrama, it’s very easy for your story to tread between too soapy, or too pretentious, or just the right amount of sophistication. To use a term common these days, bad melodrama can accidentally turn into ‘camp’ in the finale edit a la Mark Robson’s Valley of the Dolls (1967) or Frank Perry’s Mommie Dearest (1981). For Alice Troughton’s The Lesson, there isn’t anything necessarily campy, but Isobel Waller-Bridge’s sweeping score, the stunning cinematography by Anna Patarakina, Troughton’s direction and the acting from the four leads manage to remind us of introverted dramas of yesteryear such as Douglas Sirk’s Written on the Wind (1956).
In modern day England, Liam Sommers (Daryl McCormack) is an aspiring writer who takes on a tutoring position for the teenage son, Bertie (Stephen McMillan), of a respected upper class family that includes legendary novelist J.M. Sinclair (Richard E. Grant) and his artistic French wife Hélène (Julie Delpy). The arrangement is that Liam helps Bertie get into a prestigious university for a writing program and follow in his father’s and deceased older brother’s footsteps. In return, Liam gets paid generously, spends the summer living on the countryside estate and gets a step into the writing community via his association with JM. But what Liam doesn’t expect is how dysfunctional the family members are, and how quickly he gets dragged into their seedy secrets and lies.
(Bleecker Street Media)
The themes and twists throughout The Lesson might make some viewers think of Robert Redford’s Ordinary People (1980) and even Rob Reiner’s Misery (1990). But obviously, this tale takes place across the pond. Grant and Delpy are two of the best working character actors of their generations, so they naturally send in solid performances, and the two younger actors are great as well. The characters are interesting, although a bit predictable, thanks to the cast. And as mentioned earlier, the visuals are nice to look at. I also enjoyed the juxtaposition of only ever seeing Liam, the younger writer, writing in an old fashioned journal, while JM is generally shown typing on a modern PC. Despite the potential in the lead-up, I felt screenwriter Alex MacKeith’s execution of the plot was a bit heavy-handed and staged. The creators of The Lesson want us to consider it a psychological drama or neo-noir, but the family dynamic in the first half works a little better than the suspense. I also found it fascinating and surprising that there’s virtually no commentary on how a young, working class black man is hired by a rich white family. Any time Hélène and Liam were in a scene together, I kept thinking of the moment in Roger Kumble’s Cruel Intentions (1999) where Christine Baranski hilariously claims she got Sean Patrick Thomas’ character off the streets, only for him to remind her he comes from Manhattan. But nothing like that happens in The Lesson, with everyone basically color blind. If Liam was written as white, it wouldn’t really have made any difference to the story. Maybe this is an example of a cultural distinction between the UK vs the US.
Ultimately, like with my review for Celine Song’s Past Lives, if you’re interested in something beyond action/adventure schlock this July, The Lesson might do for an evening or late afternoon.