THE CHAPERONE – Review

The prospect of a film about the iconic silent film star Louise Brooks was so tantalizing. The star with the sleek black bob and bold gaze was the most forward of the screen’s stars representing women breaking the social conventions in the Roaring ’20s.

THE CHAPERONE is a tale of Louise Brooks at 16,as she is just beginning her path to stardom, which made THE CHAPERONE seem irresistible. Yet, despite a fine cast led by Elizabeth McGovern and young Haley Lu Richardson plus a script by Julian Fellowes. THE CHAPERONE falls short of that promise.

This PBS production reunites “Downton Abbey” writer Julian Fellowes and star Elizabeth McGovern in another period drama. Yet, directed by Michael Engler, in his first theatrical release after a long career in television, THE CHAPERONE feels like a TV movie. Despite nice locations and pretty costumes, it feels smaller and limited, and too often the dialog becomes flat, offering simplified social commentary from a modern view, a flaw often found in TV dramas. To their credit, the cast get all they can out of the script, co-written by Fellowes and Engler, and at times the film works. It is not so much a bad film as an uneven one, falling short of its dazzling promise.

After seeing 16-year-old Louise Brooks (Haley Lu Richardson) perform a modern dance piece as part of a fundraiser in Topeka, Kansas, society matron Norma Carlisle (Elizabeth McGovern) volunteers to accompany her to New York, after overhearing Louise’s mother Myra (Victoria Hill) talking about her trouble finding a chaperone. Talented Louise has been accepted as a student at the cutting-edge Denishaw modern dance school in New York. The ambitious, rebellious Kansas-born teen dreams of being an Isadora Duncan-style dancer but she is also chaffing to escape her conventional hometown Wichita.

Norma Carlisle has her own reasons for wanting to travel to New York. Something has gone wrong in her marriage to her successful lawyer husband (Campbell Scott), which we learn about later in flashbacks, and despite the material comfort of her life, she is searching for a change.

As the title suggests, THE CHAPERONE isn’t really about the star-to-be Louise Brooks but about the fictional chaperone character. Rather than the young star’s tale told through the chaperone’s eyes, we get the chaperone’s story with the young star as a supporting character. It is the 60-ish Norma who goes on a journey of change, while the confident young Louise does not change. Norma is interested in theater and art and recoils in horror when a socialite friend tells her she is joining the KKK. But she’s also a supporter of Prohibition and very prim and proper, insisting that Louise behave like a lady. On one level, it is a midlife crisis type of tale but scriptwriter Julian Fellowes also loads the story down with an array of social issues, including contemporary one.

The cast also includes Bythe Danner, in a remarkable single scene that is an emotional pivot point for McGovern’s character. In well-drawn portrayals, Miranda Otto and Robert Fairchild play dance innovators Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, who founded and run the Denishawn dance studio.

Geza Rohrig, the actor who was so good in SON OF SAUL, plays a handyman at the orphanage where McGovern’s chaperone goes seeking answers about her birth parents, and a romance story blooms between. Despite the script’s problems, the cast work hard to rise above it, and occasionally succeed. Haley Lu Richardson is a young actress with a lot of promise, but seems a bit miscast as Louise Brooks. She does not look much like Brooks but effectively channels her in the dance sequences and captures some of her fire and defiant style in other scenes. A particularly strong example is a scene where Louise sneaks out to a speakeasy. When confronted, Louise is not embarrassed or apologetic but breaths in Norma’s face, saying “That’s gin” with a defiantly grin.

Sadly, such moments of fire are too rare. The film follows the chaperone and her charge in New York, building up a relationship between the fiery future star and the chaperone who is increasingly questioning her own life choices. But then, frustratingly, the film skips over all of Louise Brooks film career, and reunites them years later in Wichita after Brooks returns home, the second half of a framing device that opens the film.

It is not a bad film so much as a disappointing one. Mostly it whets the appetite for a film that is really about Louise Brooks. THE CHAPERONE opens Friday, Apr. 12,at Landmark’s Plaza Frontenac Cinema.

RATING: 3 out of 5 stars