I found this movie truly enjoyable for a couple of reasons. It is set in Buenos Aires shortly after the military coup which would have been shortly before I was in the country. I was witness to some of the things which take place in the movie.
The story is about a disillusioned english man, Tom (Steve Coogan) who takes up a teaching posiition at a private school in Buenos Aires outside the capital. He teaches English and poetry and is assigned to coach the rugby team. He barely knows the rules to rugby. When the actual coup takes place, the boys are sent home for a week, and Tom travels to Uruguay for a vacation. There he comes upon a group of penguins who have gotten caught in an oil slick and perished. One is alive so he nurses it back to health. The penguin becomes attached to him, and won't let him alone. It won't go back to sea. In the end he brings it back to the school where he hides it in his apartment. During the day his housekeeper, Maria (Vivian el Jabber). He befriends she and her granddaughter, Sofia (Alfonsina Carrocio). Sofia is active in politics and protesting against the military coup. When she and Tom are out shopping, she is picked up by the military government and Tom is unable to intervene or protect her. He deals with his failing until he cannot any longer, and he confronts who he knows is the head of the military secret police on behalf of Sofia asking for her return. As he result he too is picked up and beat up and then returned. He is a British subject. It is only when the head master, Buckle (Jonathan Pryce) gets involved and talks to the government official that Sofia is released. There was a point when the penguin is discovered and Tom is taken by the military police that Buckle had asked him to resign. However he is spurned to to action and resolves this with himself. The penguin becomes a part of the class, and the students actually learn when the penguin is in the classroom.
This movie is based on the memoir of Tom Michell of the same name. In the movie the lead character is older and more crusty than Tom Michell was when he actually taught in Buenos Aires and had a penguin for a pet. Other things from the movie I saw--the grandmothers protesting in the Plaza de Mayo across from the Pink house by the cathedral for their disappeared children and grandchildren. Many of the grandchildren were adopted out after their parents were killed. The checking of documents randomly on the street by military men in uniform. I also knew a doctor who disappeared and then was retuned after being tortured. And another woman who was grieving the loss of a child who had been taken and she didn't know what had become of the child. And the story of another woman and her husband who taught in the illiteracy program. They escaped to Spain but all their home was taken and given to a military family.
