Penguin Bloom

Movie Name: Penguin Bloom
Year of Release: 2020
Director: Glendyn Ivin
Starring: Naomi Watts, Andrew Lincoln, Jackie Weaver, Rachel House, Lisa Hensley, Gia Carides, Leeanna Walsman, Griffin Murray-Johnston, Felix Cameron, Abe Clifford-Barr
Genre: Drama
Score out of ten (whole numbers only): 5
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Synopsis and Review:

Director Glendyn Ivin has made a career for himself directing a variety of TV shows and made for TV films, with "Penguin Bloom" actually being his second feature film following his debut with "Last Ride". The film follows the story of the Bloom family, particularly of its matriarch, Sam Bloom. The family is presented as a tightly woven group, filled with camaraderie and love. While on vacation in Thailand, Sam falls off a high balcony, resulting in partial paralysis of her body. As she tries to cope with the new realities of her life, the same goes with her family, all of whom try to help her as much as possible. Since the family lives fairly near the beach, one day while out and about, her eldest son uncovers an injured magpie, which he brings home to care and tend for. Sam is initially infuriated by the constant noise of the bird, but as time progresses she cares for it, and eventually forms a bond with it, as does the whole family. As Sam's husband Cameron tries to re-introduce her to life, the same goes for Penguin, the magpie, who progressively opens his wings and learns to fly. 

"Penguin Bloom" is a film that focuses its attention simultaneously on a dramatic event which radically changes a woman's life, while also trying to grasp the impact that such an event has on family dynamics, all of this wrapped in this life affirming metaphor of a bird who heals and learns to fly once more. Tackling a dramatic narrative such as this, can take many directions, including superlative examples such as Julian Schnabel's "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly", where the enormous challenges of the title character and his family are fantastically captured, with a very distinct point of view. "Penguin Bloom" while having an interesting storyline, never really transcends the illustrative tone that the director creates. For all the pain and hardship Naomi Watts encapsulates in her restrained performance, the direction itself fails to really capture the bond between her and the titular Penguin, the same way it also fails to bring some poetry to the aspect of healing and learning to fly once again. The issue with this film, isn't necessarily that it's poorly rendered or for that matter, poorly acted: the characters are sufficiently developed, the relationships are compelling enough to warrant attention, but ultimately the film lacks a point of view that makes this journey, of a woman and her family into a new life, more viscerally impactful and compelling. Naomi Watts is always a fantastic presence, and she has good support from Andrew Lincoln and Jackie Weaver. It's watchable but ultimately forgettable.