‘The Lesson’ Review: Richard E. Grant Steals Show In Slow-Burn Tale Of Literary Larceny – Tribeca Film Festival

Damon Wise
·4 min read
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Though it doesn’t exactly have the same warm, melancholic charm, Alice Troughton’s elegant literary thriller The Lesson could give star Richard E. Grant the kind of late-career bump that last year’s Living afforded Bill Nighy. An Oscar nom might be a little fanciful at this stage, but a BAFTA shot is a no-brainer, with Grant on top form as a mercurial, narcissistic British author. Co-star Julie Delpy might also find new offers coming in, showing a stiletto-sharp new side to herself as his enigmatic wife.

Though it doesn’t have the intensity of this year’s Palme d’Or winner Anatomy of a Fall, Troughton’s upper-middle-class gothic is working in similar territory — with the exception of art curator Hélène, three of the four main characters are writers at various stages of their career. The minimalistic opening credits set an intriguing tone — if Sally Potter made a Knives Out movie, it would look something like this — and the film unfolds in three chapters, with a prologue and an epilogue. It’s largely an affectation that doesn’t add much to the story, but the intent is probably more intellectual than visceral, adding a clever, meta layer of irony to a story that juggles notions of storytelling and authorial intent right to the very end.

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The prologue lays out the premise: young novelist Liam Sommers (Daryl McCormack) is giving an interview about his acclaimed new book. Immediately, Chapter One takes us into flashback mode, with Sommers on his way to take up a teaching post with the legendary J. M. Sinclair, a writer whose once-glittering career took a knock after the tragic death of his son Felix. Sommers’s job is to tutor Felix’s teenage brother Bertie (Stephen McMillan) and coach him through to a prestigious university place, but Sinclair is sceptical about his son having the chops to pass the exam — and frequently tells him so.

What the family do not yet know is that Sommers is something of a superfan when it comes to J.M. Sinclair, watching endless interview footage of the writer holding court. Films about writers and writing are notoriously thorny to pull off, in terms of putting abstract literary concepts on screen, but The Lesson addresses that from the get-go. “There are no new ideas,” Sinclair expounds. “Average writers attempt originality, the great writers steal.” And once he’s ensconced in the Sinclair home — a lavish country estate, seemingly miles from anywhere, Sommers sets out to steal whatever he can from this great mind, devouring every minor detail of his hero’s everyday life.

At first, this suggests a cuckoo-in-the-nest scenario, complete with sinister Post-It notes, but after a frosty start the imperiously rude Sinclair takes a shine to the young man. Well-read, and with a photographic memory, Sommers is also useful in the I.T. department, which comes in handy during Sinclair’s frequent tech meltdowns (“We’ll make a thief of you yet,” he encourages). Sinclair even trusts Sommers with his long-delayed new novel Rose Tree, which Sommers agrees to read on condition that Sinclair casts an eye over his own long-gestating novel, Tower 24. But when Sommers fails to pay the correct obeisance and criticizes Sinclair’s book for its weak final chapter, Sinclair lets rip and trashes Sommers’ work with withering savagery. “We’re not peers,” he sneers. You’re my proof-reader.”

In the film’s last chapter, Sommers sets about taking his revenge, and a plan starts to take shape after he discovers a mysterious room, locked since Felix’s death. But although the twist is telegraphed pretty early on — perhaps deliberately so, given Sinclair’s posturing as some kind of book-of-the-month-club buccaneer — things end with a satisfying surprise that reveals the true architect of all this intrigue.

It’s not especially commercial nor especially austere, occupying a strange middle ground between Hope Gap and Tár. And although the hero of the piece is ostensibly Sommers, played with subtle shades of Tom Ripley by Good Luck to You Leo Grande’s McCormack, the standout, inevitably, is Grant, who’s on fire here as the domineering patriarch whose winner-takes-all attitude is just a storefront: behind the bitching and bombast there’s just a sad, hollow man who’s lost everything he loved, and knows it.

Title: The Lesson
Festival: Tribeca (Spotlight Narrative)
Director: Alice Troughton
Screenwriter: Alex MacKeith
Cast: Richard E Grant, Julie Delpy, Daryl McCormack, Stephen McMillan, Crispin Letts
Running time: 1 hr 42 min
Sales agent: Film Constellation

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