In Madame Sousatzka, Shirley MacLaine returns to the big screen for the first time since winning the Oscar for Terms of Endearment. (Well, she did a cameo in Cannonball Run II, but we’ll ignore that.) And it’s a full-blown star turn, a choice character role that the actress understandably plays to the hilt.
I suspect, however, that the movie might benefit from a performance that was a bit less obviously a trouper’s response to a boffo acting challenge. Part of this is inherent in the role; this Madade Sousatzka is one of those literary traditions, the larger-than-life teacher who completely influences the lives of her students. A music teacher, she’s prone to tell the mothers of prospective students that, “I teach not only how to play, but how to live.” Sort of a cross between Mr. Chips and a retired Auntie Mame.
Not only that, but the character comes equipped with an exotic gypsy-Russian background, and her London flat is stuffed with the bric-a-brac of an eccentric life. MacLaine will probably get great reviews and perhaps another Oscar nomination, but this role is almost too juicy. Although she has a number of telling moments, I think MacLaine remains somewhat outside her character; giving a performance, rather than inhabiting the part.
The episode in this character’s life that serves as the focus of the film is her tutelage of a 15-year-old pianist (a winning performance by Navin Chowdhry) who has the promise to be her finest protégé ever. Eventually Madame clashes with the boy’s working-class mother (Shabana Azmi), who wants her son to start giving concerts and earning money. Madame Sousatzka, recalling her own mortifying freeze-up when her fearsome mother pushed her into a coming-out concert many years earlier, doesn’t want to rush the boy.
There are a number of other story strands, expertly woven by screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (A Room with a View), who co-wrote with director John Schlesinger. Everything circles around Madame Sousatzka’s building, where her student becomes infatuated with a pretty neighbor (Twiggy, lending a beguiling presence). The neighbor’s boyfriend (Leigh Lawson) is an agent who wants to sign the kid up for a concert performance, an ambition that draws a withering response.
Schlesinger, who won the Oscar in 1969 for Midnight Cowboy, has mellowed a bit with age. There are still some elements of Madame Soutsatzka’s character that are too broadly drawn, but Schlesinger underplays other things very nicely, such as the apparently gay doctor who also lives in Madame’s building, and the symbolic fact that the building itself is being ruthlessly sized up for demolition.
As pleasant as much of this is, there’s something fuzzy and sentimental about the basic premise of the wonderful, life-changing teacher. Especially when what we see of Madame Sousatzka’s wonderfulness consists primarily of shoving cookies into her student’s mouth and demanding that he wear maroon velvet jackets.
First published in The Herald, October 27, 1988
MacLaine didn’t get the Oscar nomination, but she won a Golden Globe, so there. Navin Chowdhry went on to a long career, and Twiggy and Leigh Lawson were married the year this movie came out, and remain so. I left Peggy Ashcroft out of the cast list.
WHAT A FEELING! 