Louise Brooks is not supposed to be drinking. First of all, it’s Prohibition, so no one is supposed to be drinking. Second, it’s 1922, and she’s barely 16. Third, her mother has entrusted her in the care of a chaperone, who has accompanied her to New York, so that Louise could stay safe while auditioning for a dance company.
So when the chaperone finds Louise in a speakeasy, we might expect the girl to be embarrassed. Instead she walks up to her minder, breathes into her face and says, “That’s gin.”
The contrast presented by “The Chaperone” is about more than two personalities. It’s about two women on opposite sides of a pivot point in American social history. Norma (Elizabeth McGovern) is a middle-aged, Midwestern woman who has certain ideas about propriety and decorum. And Louise (Haley Lu Richardson), the future movie star, is part of the remarkable generation of young women that would soon be dancing the Charleston on tabletops and changing the country forever.
The film is based on Laura Moriarty’s novel, and the story really is fiction, in that Norma is a made-up character, there to show what it might have been like for a 19th century woman to see, right in front of her, the freedom she unconsciously craves. Along the way, the script, written by Julian Fellowes, provides for a series of small, lively incidents that have fun presenting Brooks as a preternaturally mature and scarily perceptive wild woman in training.
As Brooks, Richardson does not disappoint. Facially, she looks nothing like the 1920s film star, but she has charm and assertiveness, and in every other way she looks just like her, so that when she’s dancing in Ruth St. Denis’ studio, you feel as though you’re seeing the real thing. If there’s a difference between Richardson and Brooks, it’s that Brooks seemed more oblivious and spontaneous, while Richardson seems more ironic and knowing. Then again, Brooks may have been an ironic, knowing person who was good at seeming oblivious and spontaneous on screen.
In “The Chaperone,” Brooks is something of a fixed entity, a fully formed force of nature already heading toward her peculiar form of glory. She has stuff to do all day — studying by day and partying by night, while Elizabeth McGovern as Norma has time to look inside.
Imagine this: You grew up in a very defined world, and you’ve made a comfortable home in it. You’re used to it. You even sort of like it. And then one day, you hear the clanging of keys, and it’s suddenly revealed that the home you live in — in the only world you’ve ever known — is actually a prison. Do you leave? You know you should. But do you want to? And if you do leave, where do you go? These questions are sensitively and poignantly handled, both in McGovern’s performance and in the film, in general.
“The Chaperone” is the first feature film from director Michael Engler, who has had a long career directing for television (“Sex and the City,” “Downton Abbey” ). The movie does have an intelligent TV feel in its technique, with its focus on actors’ faces and on acting moments that can be easily seen, even on a small screen.
Among the moments not to be missed: Pay attention to Blythe Danner, who nails her one scene, playing a role that calls for surface warmth — and just underneath that, an inner life so cold it could freeze the world.
“The ChaMperone”: Drama. Starring Elizabeth McGovern and Haley Lu Richardson. Directed by Michael Engler. Theaters and Showtimes