Review of The Chaperone

I think this would be most interesting to people who already know a lot about Louise Brooks and aren't expecting a sort of biography of her. The movie is really for fans of the book and the story. I saw a number of reviews that complained about how the character of Louise took second place next to Norma's quest to find out about her beginnings, but Elizabeth McGovern was so much more sympathetic a character than Haley Lu Richandson's Louise that this didn't bother me at all. I enjoyed most the aspect of the story that dealt with the discovery Norma made about her husband, how she chose to deal with it, and and how her family evolved over time, especially in the sort of epilogue that showed what happened to the characters 20 years later. I liked the sets even though the scenes in NYC didn't appear to be filmed there and didn't especially evoke the city. However, there were moments that truly did evoke the Twenties. I did not enjoy Haley Lu Richardson's performance as Louise as much as some other reviewers did. She didn't seem to have the compelling star power that Louise Brooks had, and I found her verbal sparring matches with Norma to be grating and a bit unreal, way too sophisticated and mature for a teenager in Wichita in the 1920s even though she WAS playing a true groundbreaker. Campbell Scott is always a pleasure to watch - in fact most of the other actors were - and Elizabeth McGovern was sympathetic and believable, especially toward the end. I especially loved Reza Gohrig's straightforward and affecting performance as Joseph. It was almost the heart of the movie - if you saw him in Son of Saul, he evokes the same degree of both sympathy and admiration here.