Producers: Patrick Ewald, Shaked Berenson, Andreas Wentz, Nicolas Veinberg, Steven P. Wegner, Robin Jonas and Jonathan E. Lim Director: David Schurmann Screenplay: Kristen Lazarian and Paulina Lagudi Cast: Jean Reno, Adriana Barraza, Alexia Moyano, Nicolás Francella, Rochi Hernández, Juan José Garnica, Pedro Urizzi, Amanda Magalhães, Maurício Xavier, Pedro Caetano, Thalma de Freitas, Ravel Cabral and Duda Galvão Distributor: Roadside Attractions
Grade: B
Nice, sweet, touching, uplifting and fun—all apply to this easygoing tale of a reclusive Brazilian man rejuvenated by rescuing a wayward penguin that becomes attached to him. Fortunately another word—cloying—doesn’t, even if manipulative does. David Schurmann’s “My Penguin Friend” might be the best 1950s Disney live-action family film that Disney never made.
It’s based on an extraordinary true story: in 2011 retiree João Perei de Souza, living in a Brazilian coastal community, found a Magellanic penguin that had been caught up in an oil slick. He carefully cleaned off the bird’s feathers, nursed it back to health, and released it back into the sea. The following year it returned from its home in Patagonia, five thousand miles away, and remained with its rescuer, who’d named it Dindim after a child’s mispronunciation of penguim (the Portuguese word for penguin) for several months before departing again. This back-and-forth continued for eight years. (In 2020 Alayne Kay Christian published a children’s book with illustrations by Milanka Reardon, “An Old Man and His Penguin,” about the duo, while videos and documentaries spread word about them.)
That’s the story that inspired screenwriters Kristen Lazarian and Paulina Lagudi and director Schurmann, who have given the strange but simple tale a dramatic (some would say melodramatic) arc for the screen. But the centerpiece remains the relationship between the old man and the bird.
In this telling, João is introduced as a virile young fisherman (played by Pedro Urizzi) happily married to Maria (Amanda Magalhães). Their young son Miguel (Juan José Garnica) begs his father to take him out on his boat—it’s the kid’s birthday—and João reluctantly agrees. But a storm suddenly arises, the boat capsizes, and the boy drowns.
Decades later João (now played by Jean Reno) remains heartbroken, refusing to have much to do with his neighbors, even old friends like Oscar (Maurício Xavier, played in his younger days by Pedro Caetano). Maria (now Adriana Barraza) remains loving and supportive but pained by her husband’s morose reclusiveness. When he carries the penguin home from the ocean, she’s astonished by his insistence about caring for it, and even mildly annoyed by his giving it the run of their home.
But the change of attitude she sees in him is gratifying. Without belaboring the fact, it’s clear that Dindim, as it’s named by little local girl Lucia (Duda Galvão), becomes a stand-in for the dead Miguel—it even waddles among the mementos left in the room his parents have kept in his memory—and the bird’s presence breaks down the shell João’s built around himself. He’s actually jovial and convivial again. And once Dindim’s annual routine of departure and return becomes apparent, he remains that way: the penguin is a friend, not a pet, he explains to those who ask, and he does what he wants.
Dindim’s time in Ilha Grande dominates the film, with footage of the bird’s waddling through the streets to the smiles of passersby or causing mischief in the house that it’s made a home away from home. But those sequences are contrasted with the periods the bird spends with its colony back in Patagonia, where it’s observed by a research team—Adriana (Alexia Moyano), Carlos (Nicolás Francella) and Stephanie (Rocío Hernández). When they hear about the penguin that reappears each year in Brazil, they investigate whether it might be one of theirs (Adriana is hopeful, Carlos dismissive) and when they learn it is, ask journalist Paulo (Ravel Cabral) to track João down; he’s instrumental in publicizing the story. But there’s a hitch: the team’s superiors want Dindim brought in for further study, and that results in an accident that requires a distraught João to enlist Oscar and the other fishermen to go out into rough waters to rescue the bird again.
Truth be told, that entire part of the film doesn’t work, not only because the Patagonian scenes are stilted and forced, haltingly acted (the dialogue sounds badly dubbed), but because it interrupts the much more affecting material. Reno brings depth to João, navigating his emotional transitions with admirable sensitivity and interacting with the penguins—ten of them, according to the credits—like a proud father. Barraza brings strength to Maria, and the rest of the cast add to the ambience without overwhelming the story with local color.
That’s provided by the visuals—the production design by Mercedes Alfonsín and especially the lovely widescreen cinematography by Anthony Dod Mantle, who gets a bit cute when he employs a fish-eye lens as a sort of Pengy Cam to suggest seeing things from Dindim’s perspective. Schurmann and editor Teresa Font can’t be accused of rushing things—the movie does move slowly, which might be a drawback for youngsters accustomed to a more frantic pace in their entertainment; but the only real irritant is the score by Fernando Velázquez, which too often opts for either cutesiness, or overemphasis, or both.
At least in the print seen for this review, incidentally, the final credits give the film’s original title, “The Penguin & the Fisherman.”