LEARNING TO FLY (PENGUIN BLOOM)

 

There's always a place for sentimentality in cinema.

Charlie Chaplin knew it during the silent era and was not averse to regularly tugging his audience's heart strings.

Walt Disney knew it too and built a studio around animated and live action films that touched the heart as well as the funny bone.

Steven Spielberg has known it too, playing with his audience's emotions in films as diverse as 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind,' 'ET,' 'Always,' 'The Color Purple' and 'Schindler's List'.

Sentimentality, if it is done well, can be one hell of a powerful tool in cinema.

However it is also extremely hard to pull off.

Overcook it and you can really wreck your film, reducing it to treacle.

Australian director Glendyn Ivin has decided to walk that fine line in his Netflix movie 'Penguin Bloom,' a story about a woman's road to a new life after a debilitating injury.

Based on true story documented in a 2016 book of the same name by Cameron Bloom and Bradley Trevor Grieve, it tells the story of Sam Bloom and how she became a national kayak champion.

The mother of three boys - Rueben, Noah and Oli - she suffered a horrendous accident while on a 2013 family holiday in Thailand.

While taking in the view from her hotel's rooftop observation deck, a balcony railing gave way and she plunged 20 feet onto the concrete below.

Her skull was fractured in several places, her brain bled, both lungs were punctured and her spine was shattered, leaving her paralysed from the chest down.

With Naomi Watts portraying Sam, Ivin tells the story from the perspective of Murray Johnston's Noah who feels guilt about the accident that befell his mum.

In the immediate aftermath of the fall, Sam is initially disengaged from family life and overcome by sadness as she realises just how life changing her injury is.

Her husband, Andrew Lincoln's Cameron and their sons, Noah, Felix Cameron's Rueben and Abe Clifford Barr's Oli do their best to lift her spirits.

However, confined to a wheelchair, she is nervous about venturing outside and prefers to remain confined to quarters.

When Noah stumbles upon an injured magpie chick on the beach near their home, the family decide to nurse it back to health.

Sam is initially reluctant for the bird to be raised in the house, given the reputation of Australian magpies for being quite aggressive.

However she quickly realises nursing the bird, who Noah has named Penguin, back to health is important to her son and it isn't long before she is bonding with it.

Sam also has to deal with an over protective mum, Jacki Weaver's Jan and a sister, Leanna Walsman's Kylie who is keen to encourage her to get back to living life.

That leads her to Rachel House's Gaye, a kind but  no nonsense kayak instructor who is also determined to give Sam some purpose.

Adapted for the screen by Shaun Grant and Harry Cripps, all this makes for a rather amiable, if too predictable drama.

Penguin's recuperation inevitably mirrors Sam's.

While Watts, Lincoln and the rest of the cast do a decent job, they are often lumbered with dialogue that is very on the nose.

Weaver, in particular, has to grapple with a very stereotypical role but a scene later in the film where family tensions spill out over lunch never quite ignites in the way that you might expect.

Nevertheless there are loads of angsty speeches obviously intended to wring out the tears and serve as awards bait.

Ivin and his screenwriters also fall back on having Noah deliver a well intentioned but unfortunately dull narration.

This unfortunately means they spend too much time telling the audience what is going on instead of showing - a cardinal sin for a director of Ivin's calibre. 

Although to be fair, cinematographer Sam Chiplin does capture some beautiful images.

Despite this, 'Penguin Bloom' never quite reaches the heights it should and you cannot help feeling the director and his writers could have been a bit braver.

Sentimentality is all well and good but under Ivin's play it safe approach, 'Penguin Bloom' comes across not so much syrupy as bland and saccharin.

('Penguin Bloom' premiered at the Toronto Film Festival on September 13, 2020 and was made available for streaming on Netflix on January 27, 2021)

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