Penguin Bloom: After the emotional wallowing, a magpie steals what's left of the show
By Jim Slotek
Rating: C-plus
It seems counterintuitive to say we’ve seen films like Penguin Bloom before – considering it’s about a wheelchair bound woman who is inspired to overcome her gloom by a magpie named Penguin. Yeah, we see that all the time.
But, details aside, real-life Australian mom and athlete Sam Bloom’s victory over an accident that left her paralyzed, falls into a very familiar genre of films about overcoming physical adversity in one’s own way.
Trust us, Naomi Watts is nowhere near this blissful pre-bird.
The masterpiece of the list is arguably My Left Foot. Way down the list, Penguin Bloom sits a little closer to 2011’s formulaic Soul Surfer, about Bethany Hamilton, a ranked surfer who lost her arm to a shark and came back to win tournaments again.
The real Sam Bloom’s story is kind of like that. After a fall while on vacation in Thailand, she was left a paraplegic, and embraced kayaking as a way of reclaiming her agency, becoming a world-class competitor in the process.
For whatever reason, director Glendyn Ivin’s adaptation of the book about Bloom (Naomi Watts) by her photographer husband Cameron (The Walking Dead’s Andrew Lincoln) about their experience, ignores that whole last act, other than the introduction of kayak therapy. Penguin Bloom is a movie meant to wallow.
Depending on your mood, the first act may be especially tough going, full of guilt and despair as Sam mourns for her body and ability, and the unfairness of the accident that took that all away. There are flashbacks to the event itself, happiness turning to tragedy in an instant.
And to her credit, given the direction to descend into misery, Naomi Watts delivers like a pro. She is not an upbeat patient. She breaks things that remind her of who she was. And her rejection of herself comes with collateral damage in the form of emotional separation from her husband and three boys, and her mother Jan (Jacki Weaver).
PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN
What is frankly tough viewing finally finds some lightness with the introduction of the title avian. Son Noah (Griffin Murray-Johnston) finds the baby magpie (soon named Penguin by the family), abandoned after having fallen from the nest, and unable to fly. If the bird-as-metaphor for Sam isn’t obvious enough, there are lines of dialogue that hammer it home (“It must be weird to have wings but not be able to fly.”)
I wasn’t aware that magpies have such personality, but it’s safe to call Penguin (actually a series of trained birds) one of the year’s best animal performances, full of expressive squawks, demands and eccentricities, like obsessive attachments to favourite toys. Occasions where Sam is the only human in the house, and Penguin demands her attention, are sources of annoyance that morph into a challenge. A once-unwanted new family member becomes an odd addition that diverts the family from its central trauma. Penguin Bloom suddenly becomes a movie about things that happen to Penguin.
Penguin’s entrance is a relief in the gloom, and it should have happened much sooner. That, and the exclusion of Sam’s ultimate athletic triumph make Penguin Bloom seem like an unfinished movie, a feel-good story only partly told.
Penguin Bloom. Directed by Glendyn Ivin. Written by Harry Cripps from the book by Cameron Bloom. Starring Naomi Watts, Andrew Lincoln and Jacki Weaver. Debuts on Netflix, Wednesday, January 27.