Butler's Cinema Scene

Haley Lu Richardson, Elizabeth McGovern

“THE CHAPERONE” My rating: C+

103 minutes | No MPAA rating

A pall of old-fashioned made-for-TV mediocrity hangs over much of “The Chaperone,” a Masterpiece Theatre production based on a highly-regarded novel by Lawrence resident Laura Moriarty, adapted by Oscar-winning writer Julian Fellowes (“Downton Abbey,” “Gosford Park”) and featuring a more-than-solid cast.

Blame veteran TV director Michael Engler and a stingy budget for fumbling the ball here.

At first glance one might assume that this is the story of the young Louise Brooks, who in the 1920s went from Wichita to a starring role with a top New York dance troupe and then on to international stardom as the ultimate flapper and sex symbol of silent film.

Not really.  Brooks (played here by Haley Lu Richardson) certainly has a role in this yarn, but its real focus is a middle-aged Kansas  housewife and mother  (Elizabeth McGovern) who agrees to chaperone the young hellion during her Big Apple sojourn. In  the process the older woman finds her own world exploding and expanding.

Norma (McGovern) first lays eyes on 15-year-old Louise at a Wichita dance recital where she is mightily impressed by girl’s flamboyant Isadora Duncan-ish flouncing. Norma is a stolid Midwestern matron, stuck in a sexless marriage (that’ll be explained later) to a lawyer (Campbell Scott); they have twin college-bound sons.

When she learns that Louise has won a coveted spot with the famous Denishawn modern dance company in NYC, and that the girl’s parents are looking for an appropriate chaperone to accompany their daughter to the big city, she volunteers. Heck, she needs some adventure.

Haley Lu Richardson (center) as Louise Brooks

She gets more than she bargained for.  Despite her tender years, Louise is a man magnet and an outrageously unfettered personality.

On the cross country train ride Louise sneers at Norma’s reading matter, Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, claiming it’s about people made miserable by “ridiculous rules and manners.” For her part, Norma lectures on the importance of propriety, especially in, ahem, sexual matters: “Men don’t like candy that’s been unwrapped…they don’t know where it’s been.”

Once in New York, the girl lets rip.  She flirts with every man or boy she meets and hits the speakeasies. At least Louise is a talented dancer, though the attention showered on her by company choreographer Ted Shawn (Robert Fairchild) obviously gnaws at his wife and business partner, former dancing star Ruth St. Dennis (Aussie star Miranda Otto).

Still, this is Norma’s story, not Louise’s.  The Kansas lady has a second reason for coming on this trip.  She spent some of her early life in a Manhattan orphanage run by an order of nuns; she’s determined to get information about her birth mother.

Along the way she befriends Joseph (Geza Rohrig, who played the title character in the concentration camp drama “Son of Saul”), a German handyman at the orphanage. He not only helps Norma track down and retrieve the often errant Louise, but kindles some unexpected emotions.

The film is peppered throughout with dreamlike flashbacks to Norma’s childhood and more recent marital traumas and ends with a sort of upbeat can’t-we-all-just-get-along blended family that seems hugely unlikely for that time and place.

The acting is fine, particularly from McGovern, who nicely handles Norma’s segue from uptight matron to more open, thinking individual.

Richardson, who made an impressive splash as a supporting player in “The Edge of Seventeen,” is OK as Louise, though she never projects either the simmering sexuality or the dance skills attributed to the real Brooks. She’s way too squeaky clean.

The production looks like it was made on a shoestring…we’re used to opulence from Masterpiece Theatre efforts, but this one feels as if was patched together from sets and costumes left over from other productions.

| Robert W. Butler