Films about fictitious great writers often stumble when it comes to the character’s actual writing: Viewers must suspend disbelief that a lofty literary reputation has been built on the purplest of screenwriter-devised prose. A blackly comic melodrama in which writerly ego, ambition and insecurity do increasingly destructive battle, “The Lesson” gets around that trap by folding questions of authorship into its arch country-house mystery: Who is writing what, and to what extent it matters, are the questions that keep director Alice Troughton and screenwriter Alex MacKeith’s mutual debut feature interesting, even as it slides into occasional, overheated cliché.
When the film’s own words don’t quite pass muster, however, a tight, tony ensemble of actors gives them some polish and punch. A big, ripe turn by Richard E. Grant – as a celebrated British novelist looking to emerge from a gloomy hiatus with one more masterwork – represents the chief selling point of this low-key Tribeca premiere, though as his wary potential protégé, it’s Irish up-and-comer Daryl McCormack (fresh off his BAFTA nomination for “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande”) who carries the bulk of the film in quieter, wilier style. With a chablis-dry Julie Delpy playing intermediary in their passive-aggressive duel, this U.K.-German co-production is the kind of accessibly upscale fare more frequently served to its target audience in another European language; Bleecker Street will release it Stateside.
A self-proclaimed prologue – kicking off a cutely apposite if mostly ornamental chaptered structure – introduces young writer Liam Sommers (McCormack) at a promotional Q&A for his acclaimed debut novel. “What exactly is it that drew you to tell this story?” asks the interviewer. Rather than taking the banality of the question as a cue for a “Tár”-like satire of toadying in the arts, “The Lesson” instead answers it with a brisk cut to the relatively recent past.
A fresh English Lit graduate in need of work, Liam accepts employment as a live-in tutor to Bertie (Stephen McMillan), the spoiled, sullen teenage son of his literary idol J.M. Sinclair (Grant), for his upcoming Oxford entrance exams. The job requires Liam to be sequestered in the Sinclairs’ sprawling, leafy rural estate – the location is never specified, but it’s in the parallel universe of the ultra-wealthy – which suits him just fine: When he’s not teaching the minimally engaged Bertie, he has idyllic free time to work on his novel-in-progress, while he hopes to gain some mentoring into the bargain from the increasingly reclusive Sinclair.
But something feels off from the moment he arrives at the property’s imposing iron gates, and not just because Sinclair – not altogether unusually for a brilliant, isolated novelist – turns out to be an aggressively frosty misanthrope. His wife, highbrow French art curator Hélène (Delpy), is scarcely much warmer, but more accommodating of the outsider: At her behest, Liam is treated as part of a profoundly unhappy family, joining the table for their terse, awkward dinners together, in the very seat once occupied by Bertie late older brother, who died by suicide some years before. Yet there’s more to the Sinclairs’ collective misery than meets the eye, and if that sounds like a setup for a good novel, Liam agrees – as he begins noting observational details on Post-it notes that he ill-advisedly leaves on his bedroom mirror. (MacKeith’s characters are all booksmart but movie-dumb.)
“Good writers borrow but great writers steal,” says Sinclair (not the kind of man to easily reveal his first name) on more occasions than is required for viewers to understand its narrative significance. Liam may be filching from his employers’ lives for inspiration, but Sinclair isn’t averse to a little creative larceny himself – not least when, thawing to his polite admirer, he invites Liam into the writing process for his long-awaited new novel, which is proving oddly hard to finish. Grant, ideally cast, plays Sinclair’s braying, stentorian self-regard to the hilt, prompting viewers to wonder just how much of his reputation is down to talent and how much to bullish entitlement. It’s a grandiose performance well-tempered by McCormack’s more clear-eyed cool, revealing more cunning to Liam’s deference as the film goes on.
If it’s the conclusion of Sinclair’s novel that causes all the trouble – Liam notes that its final third feels like the work of another author altogether – it’s perhaps more meta than intended that the film’s own third chapter goes slightly awry in its tonal shift, with multiple latent hostilities finally coming to the surface in overly predictable, near-farcical fashion. Yet there’s a high irony threshold to the performances, as well as to Troughton’s glassy, reserved direction, that keeps the careering script in check. The filmmaking continually balances broad gestures with finer ones: Isobel Waller-Bridge’s score is prominently discordant, but countered by the restraint of Anna Patarkina’s canvas-toned lensing. “The Lesson” feels an edit or two away from its best form, but that kind of becomes the joke. Courtesy Variety