One of the best things about the quaint, slow-moving, sweet little movie “The Chaperone” is that it strongly conveys how difficult it must have been for vivacious, talented, headstrong individuals to remain in small American cities and towns (like Wichita, Kansas) back in the 1920s.
Sleepy backwaters, farm communities, and anyplace USA, where people get married straight out of high school, go into the family business, and start making babies immediately—who can live within those confines? Plenty of folks. Most folks. It’s the life of simpler pleasures.
The Irony
The other thing “The Chaperone” reminds one of is the America before abortion was the norm, when out-of-wedlock fooling around resulted in many orphans. And when orphans were put on trains that stopped in small towns all across the land and were taken in by families.And so “The Chaperone” tells the tale of Mrs. Norma Carlisle (Elizabeth McGovern), herself a former orphan, chaperoning the headstrong, 16-year-old Louise Brooks (Haley Lu Richardson, currently starring in the teen love story “Five Feet Apart”) from Wichita to New York City, so the girl can pursue her dancing Hero’s Journey. And avoid producing any orphans.
The film’s based on the more-or-less truthful novel, by Laura Moriarty, about the early career of Jazz Age sensation Louise Brooks, who went on to become a silent-film star. In the film, Louise has been accepted into a prestigious New York modern dance school, but her father insists on adult supervision in the big city.
We assume that since Norma’s twin sons are now grown, she jumps on the escort job just to get the heck out of Dodge for a bit. However, Norma’s marriage contains a secret tragedy, and it so happens that New York is where the nun-administered orphanage where Norma lived as a child is located. Norma would like to learn of her roots.
Norma and Louise begin a feisty, mother-daughter, older/younger-sister, teacher-student relationship, where each dynamic swings both ways, due to Norma’s age and experience versus Louise’s charismatic, self-assured, wise-beyond-her-years personality.
And so Norma leads a double life in New York for a time. On the one hand, she’s walking around with a figurative shepherd’s crook, yanking young Louise from batting eyelashes at smitten waiters for free ice creams and helping her purge overconsumption of speakeasy gin; on the other, she’s tracking down her own mother (played by Blythe Danner).
As for the latter mission, the orphanage’s mother superior turns Norma down flat regarding giving out information on relatives. However, Norma strikes up a friendship with the orphanage’s widowed and exceedingly helpful janitor, Joseph (Geza Rohrig, currently also starring in “To Dust”).
Tradition or Progress?
“The Chaperone” takes a mild look at various issues America was dealing with at the time: orphans and why young people ought not to be left unsupervised, the possible lethal repercussions of exposed homosexuality, prohibition, race relations, the Ku Klux Klan, white America’s fear of black people, and women’s suffrage.Norma’s character arc resides, basically, in the metaphor of her corset. Her dedication to daily corset-wearing demonstrates to us the origin of the term “tight-laced.” She loosens up eventually, literally and figuratively.
But while Louise’s effect on her matronly chaperone could be seen as Norma’s embracing the mantra of the Al-Anon 12-step group: “Put yourself first,” Norma’s effect on Louise is more like that of a guardian angel. Norma circles back years later, after Hollywood has evicted Louise and she’s down and out and back in Wichita. Norma actually facilitates Louise’s second Hero’s Journey out of Wichita. That kind of long-term karmic connection is a rare thing.
If you go and relax your twanging synapses (after viewing any “Avenger” movie) and breathe and slow your pace down, “The Chaperone” is actually rather enjoyable. And it will give you much to ponder afterward.