That relationship, more than the movie’s ham-handed historical fiction, is what makes the movie watchable. Their pairing makes this a look at two generations of actresses.
In such early roles as “Ordinary People,” McGovern was the very ingénue that Richardson is now. Although her physical resemblance doesn’t go much farther than Brooks’s iconic hairstyle, she does well in a role that could have resonated with her other recent performances but feels underwritten.Īs the title indicates, “The Chaperone” is really about Norma and, thus, is more of a showcase for McGovern, a veteran actress well suited to play mentor. Here she has the burden of playing a real-life figure whom some audiences may be familiar with. Richardson has turned in terrific performances in such recent films as “Columbus” and “Support the Girls,” which reflected two very different career options for young women today: the creative life of an architect in the former, and the service industry in the latter. She, too, questions her future, unsure what to do about her unfaithful husband (Campbell Scott). Norma, who was adopted from a New York home for “friendless girls,” faces her past as she searches for her birthparents. The rebellious Louise naturally butts heads with her elder as she sets eyes on her future. Norma (Elizabeth McGovern) is an unhappily married woman who volunteers to accompany 15-year-old Louise (Haley Lu Richardson), whom she meets at a recital, from sleepy Wichita to New York City, where the teen has been enrolled in a prestigious dance school. Yet the intermittently effective drama that unfolds is as much about the contrast between the 1920s and 2019 as it is about the relationship between Brooks and her minder. Based on Laura Moriarty’s best-selling 2012 novel, “The Chaperone” fictionalizes an episode in the life of silent movie star Louise Brooks.
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