‘The Lesson’ Plays Seductive Mind Games With the Dark Sides of Literary Genius

Alci Rengifo

Alice Troughton’s “The Lesson” is both an engaging literary thriller and another example of pop culture reckoning with our notions of genius. Being brilliant used to give public figures a pass at having unsavory habits, over the last several years there’s been a dwindling of romantic excuses for being a monster. Troughton goes for the classic use of an opulent estate to entrap various personalities, all driven to the edge by a central figure. In this case, that figure is an acclaimed writer. We would like to think that our heroes are as we’ve formed them in our imaginations, but more often than not, actually meeting them reveals they can be terribly flawed. That idea adds to the deeper fascination of what Troughton does with her excellent ensemble.

It begins with Liam Sommers (Daryl McCormack), who confirms that there are still young college students who actually want to be authors. He’s basing his thesis on writer J.M. Sinclair (Richard E. Grant), who gives charismatic talks where he repeats the mantra that all great writers know how to steal. So, of course, Liam cannot pass up the opportunity to be the tutor for Sinclair’s young son, Bertie (Stephen McMillan). He soon arrives at the author’s lavish English estate, where he also meets Sinclair’s wife, Hélène (Julie Delpy). The family is in mourning over the suicide of Bertie’s sibling. Instantly the air is odd. Sinclair is surely brilliant, fueled by a massive ego and pretentious character. Hélène has an enigmatic air, quietly revealing her iron-fisted management of the family’s finances. When Liam gets close to finally getting Sinclair to read his own novel, which he writes longhand with a fountain pen, the relationship will grow darker and more complex. 

Troughton has made a thriller in a style rarely seen anymore, where it depends on the pure psychological tension and interaction of the characters. This is the English director’s feature debut after years of working in television. “I was staying at a hotel across from the BBC, which in the 1960s had commissioned some amazing sculptures by Eric Gill, who has now been canceled. I don’t like using that word but he’s now persona non grata,” Troughton tells Entertainment Voice about finding inspiration in the acclaimed sculptor whose diaries later revealed a life of sexual deviancy. “So while I was in this hotel, a lone campaigner took a ladder and began to chisel away Gill’s work at the BBC, because he didn’t think a pedophile’s work deserved to be celebrated. So it made me think about creativity and monstrosity. I wrestled with that and found it to be a very interesting question.”

Layers of tension build over the sense that this is home is a chamber of contained egos, personal vendettas and the shadow of Sinclair’s personality. At dinner he demands to again play Rachmaninoff, then appearing to quiz Liam on whether he even knows who that is. He too is writing a new novel, with what he knows is focused brilliance. Across from the author’s study, Liam observes as Hélène lets Sinclair go down on her, in one of those unnerving thriller shots worthy of Brian De Palma. This is all a game of egos and ambition. Liam genuinely likes Bertie, but getting close to Sinclair comes with the added threat that the man is obviously monstrous. Ah, but you can’t pass up an opportunity to let a great author read your work. When Liam scores such a feat, the plot enters another, darker labyrinth about the anger in disowning your gods.

“It revolves around so many things like plagiarism, stealing people’s art and the frustrations of a creative mind,” Julie Delpy tells Entertainment Voice. “There’s that angle about when a creative mind is challenged by a much more creative one. So it’s also sociopathic and about destruction. I called my character a ‘mother fatale’ (laughs). She’s middle-aged and no longer the perfect blonde fatale of the noirs. But she’s a mother fatale there to protect her son.” Delpy, who has played lively and charming characters in cult classics like the “Before Sunrise” trilogy of Richard Linklater, is quite a presence in “The Lesson” through her measured, secretive presence. “It was great to have the director ready to answer any question. On set I was always asking Alice what was the right dosage of mystery and aggression. I wanted to look some people in the eye and have it have meaning. It can’t just be any ‘look.’ Richard E. Grant is himself always in character.”

In many ways “The Lesson” is about the loss of the author as a macho public figure. Liam could be one of the only college students anywhere still hanging a portrait of Hemingway in his dorm, but he represents a clash with Sinclair’s more classically secluded, dark J.D. Salinger-like presence. The third act is a rather brilliant twist, all revolving around a manuscript and Liam’s apparent super memory capabilities. Yet it’s a celebration of the hard work of writing and creating, and how these personalities are pushed over the edge by the demands of the craft, and the promise succeeding in it brings. Around all this hovers how a mentor can be your doom as well as teacher.  “There’s much violence in it but in a passive aggressive sense,” says Troughton. “It’s very English. If you’ve ever sat around an English dining table you would know what I mean. There’s a reason why these kids begin public school at 7 and take years to perfect the right sarcasm for a reply. By the time they get to Oxford, they’ve been bathed in it for years.” 

Troughton’s film ends as one of the summer’s best works of cinematic iconoclasm. The genius writer turns out to crack easily if his hours of labor are lost and many of those sentences he puts on paper might not necessarily be sprung from his own imagination. “The Lesson” combines such ideas into a good thriller where the next move is hard to predict since all the chess plays are being done in the interior of the characters, to be later let loose in acts of lust, jealousy and murderous impulse. How close is this to the real thing? “Among the geniuses I’ve been able to work with, like Godard, Kieślowski, they weren’t like that because as directors you need to work with teams. It’s a team job. It’s so different from being a novelist or poet, where you’re with yourself. It’s a different energy. But I’ve met artists like painters who are a bit like that. You know, I have met writers like that as well, yes. They have destroyed everything around them. I’ve met Playwrights, writers, who have destroyed their families because of their tremendous egos. So yes, I have met people like this. They are around.”

“The Lesson” releases July 7 in theaters nationwide.