The Lesson: Noir Tutor Tale is a Stately Exercise in Class-Based Mystery

By Liz Braun

Rating: B+

A triangle of betrayal is at the centre of The Lesson, a British drama starring Richard E. Grant, Julie Delpy, and Daryl McCormack. This taut domestic thriller from director Alice Troughton concerns family secrets and notions of art and authorship, all of it constructed on a framework of class distinction and noblesse oblige.

McCormack (Good Luck to You, Leo Grande) plays Liam Sommers, an aspiring writer. He’s working on a first novel and scraping to pay the bills by working as a tutor. Liam can’t believe his luck when he’s hired to tutor the son of famed novelist J.M. Sinclair (Grant) — an author Liam idolizes.

His new pupil Bertie (Stephen McMillan) is hoping to be accepted at Oxford.

The tutoring job will involve living-in at the Sinclair estate for some weeks, a good chance for Liam to work on his own novel and maybe rub shoulders with the revered Sinclair.

Liam arrives at the Sinclair estate, where a few minor events emphasize class differences. Liam clumsily attempts to shake hands with the estate manager (Crispin Letts). His pupil disses him for being ‘only’ a tutor and later Liam is out of his depth in a conversation about Rachmaninoff.

Still, his social underdog status doesn’t quite ring true. The camera cuts away a few times to scenes of nature on the estate, notably capturing the productive beavers working the waterways.

So much busy work. So enterprising, and yet much of their work goes unnoticed.

Liam finds out fast that J.M. Sinclair is an egomaniac and a bully. Meanwhile, the entire Sinclair family also struggles with the weight of grief, mourning the loss of an older brother, Felix, who’d died a few years earlier.

Sinclair’s wife Helene (Delpy, formidable here) is somewhat withdrawn but she is kinder to Liam than anyone else in the household. From his rooms on the estate, Liam can see into the Sinclairs’ bedroom, a voyeuristic situation that eventually leads to something more between the missus and the tutor.

As time passes, Liam gets to know how the family operates. There’s a mystery of some sort around Sinclair’s long-awaited new novel, and Helene enlists Liam to find out what that mystery might be.

And why is it taking so long for Sinclair to finish writing?

Since it’s apparent nobody is being completely honest, the mystery for the viewer is who’s zooming who. You’ll find out in an overheated and somewhat dubious third act — except who doesn’t want to watch Richard E Grant chew the scenery?

Otherwise, The Lesson is slow and grand, shot with a level of lovely visual irony by cinematographer Anna Patarakina and kept vaguely unsettling thanks to music from Isobel Waller-Bridge.

It’s a clever bit of noir that keeps a viewer slightly off-balance at all times as the tension builds.

The Lesson. Written by Alex MacKeith, directed by Alice Troughton. Starring Richard E. Grant, Julie Delpy, and Daryl McCormack. In theatres July 7.