THE CHAPERONE (2018) ¢ ¢ ¢
D: Michael Engler
Elizabeth McGovern, Haley Lu Richardson,
Géza Rohrig, Victoria Hill, Campbell Scott,
Blythe Danner, Miranda Otto, Andrew Burnap
In 1922, Mrs. Myra Brooks of Wichita, Kansas, dispatches her precocious, 15-year-old daughter Louise to New York City to pursue a career in modern dance. To keep an eye on the girl while she's there, Myra sends along a middle-aged mother of two named Nora (Elizabeth McGovern), and the movie's about what happens to the two of them once they get off the train. New York turns out to be nothing like Wichita, and that's just fine with Louise, but Nora has a history in the city and a personal quest of her own. Her story as she unlocks the key to her past and (literally and figuratively) loosens her corset is crucial, and McGovern captures Nora's gradual awakening with understated sympathy and grace. Haley Lu Richardson, who plays Louise, gets the look right sometimes, but the real Louise Brooks had an "it" factor on screen that no actress playing her could hope to duplicate. That's not Richardson's fault, and as an impetuous teenager out to take life and the city by storm, she's not bad. She's just not Louise Brooks.
