Starring: Haley Lu Richardson, Elizabeth McGovern, Victoria Hill, Blythe Danner, Campbell Scott, and Geza Rohrig
Distributor: StudioCanal
Runtime: 108 mins. Reviewed in Apr 2019
| 
| 
This Australian-British-American film is based on a screenplay by Julian Fellows that is in turn based on a best selling novel of the same name by Laura Moriarty written in 2012. It tells the story of a teenager called Louise Brooks, who became the toast of silent movies, and who travelled to New York as a young girl to study dance in the company of a chaperone. Set in 1922, the film focuses on stories of two women’s lives in the early 20th Century.
In the film, a free-spirited, restless young dancer, Louise Brooks (Haley Lu Richardson), is given the opportunity to study with a leading modern dance troupe, and seeks fame in New York City. She wants to be a dancer, and before she turned to acting and then to writing, she danced to wide acclaim.
Louise’s mother (Victoria Hill) insists that her daughter can’t go to New York unless she is chaperoned. A suitable person is selected, and Louise is chaperoned on her journey by a local society matron, Norma Carlisle (Elizabeth McGovern), who is trusted for being a stern, disciplinarian. Louise is wild in spirit with a yen for the taste of alcohol and men she likes to flirt with, young and old. By contrast, Norma is controlled, reticent and self-effacing, but as needy as Louise in a different way.
Both Haley and Norma came from the tight social-milieu of Wichita, Kansas. They don’t like each other initially, but their journey profoundly affects them both. The character of Louise is real, but the character of Norma is fictional in Moriarty’s novel. The film is a coming-of-age story for Louise with a significant twist, and is sumptuously mounted. Norma’s real reason for journeying to New York is that she wants to visit the orphanage where she was raised as a child (the “New York Home for Friendless Girls”), and she is desperate to learn the identity of her true mother. She is successful in her search, and she personally grows through her disappointment.
Because the film (and book) make Louise’s chaperone the main character, the risk is that the reticence of Norma contrasts too noticeably with the youthful spontaneity of Louise, but McGovern makes the character of Norma interesting and dramatically convincing. She impressively displays a woman whose identity is defined by the role she has chosen to help others. Norma’s chaperone role, however, is one that reveals to her the truth of her past. For her, the journey is as much about self-actualisation, as it is about the fulfilment of a promise to others.
In the past, Norma was abandoned by her biological mother (Blythe Danner) soon after birth, and she wants to track her birth-parent down, to give herself a sense of redirection. In the film, she eventually meets her mother, who doesn’t want to own her. The experience throws into relief the impact of her early, love-less, marriage to an unfaithful husband (Campbell Scott), and she forms an attachment to another (Geza Rohrig), who helps her access the records of her birth.
McGovern gives an excellent portrayal of Norma, but the film vacillates between being a story of a vibrant young woman (Louise), and a story about a determined, older woman (Norma), who is searching for life beyond a troubling past. The film has force in representing two main characters who are not quite what they seem, but is essentially a dramatic piece with different stories to tell.
This is drama set at the height of the Jazz age, and the film touches on the vibrancy of an age that is one of distinct social change. Prohibition is on the way out, and the film allows the viewer to contrast staid 19th century social values with 20th century ideals of freedom and self-fulfilment. However, it depicts the contrast starkly. Well-mounted and acted, the movie stays at the surface of penetrating drama, but is an enjoyable period-piece of cinema that entertainingly shows the growth of women’s lives at a time of great social change.
Peter W. Sheehan is Associate of the Australian Catholic Office for Film and Broadcasting
12 Random Films…
