The Tutor

This half-baked Henry James adaptation from the recent suicide Ivan Noel is basically what you'd expect. The way the movie is photographed completely overwhelms any pretense of story. Noel was a photographer, and his favourite subject were underaged boys, preferably naked. "La tutora" is only an outlier in that it features a naked girl as well.

The plot is an afterthought, but who watches a Noel movie for plot anyway?

The fact that the movie is apparently set in the modern day only makes the inclusion of a 19th century storyline seem even more pointless.

A young woman, Mona (Romina Pinto), applies for a job as governess to look after and teach two kids who live in a rural part of Argentina. The kids' parents passed away a couple of years ago. The children live with their housekeeper in a manor belonging to their uncle (Julio Mendez). He runs a medical practice in the city and is too busy to look after his nephew and niece. Mona has studied psychology and worked a short while in a Kindergarten. This would be her first permanent position. Mona is over the moon when she hears that she got the job.

Mona is in for a surprise; the children are feral, running wild and are poorly educated. They could scarcely read. Àngel (Valentino Vinco) and his sister Ema (Malena Alonso) run around the property half-clothed, and that is really bothering Mona. Being nude in the open is unnatural, she believes. She is determined that it will have to change. It does not seem to bother the housekeeper, Clara (Cristina Maresca) though.

One evening Mona spots a man standing on the lawn, looking at the house. It resembles the man on the framed photograph, posing with Àngel, she saw earlier in the house. She asks the housekeeper about this man, and learns to her shock that it is a photograph of the gardener, who died a couple of years ago. The gardener and Àngel were apparently close. Mona, with her quasi-psychological background is convinced that the gardener must have molested Àngel at some stage, and that this is the reason why the lad is acting so strangely. Mona's 'do-gooder', hypocritical and know-all approach to 'help' the children gathers momentum as the film progresses. But Mona could never foresee how things would eventually turn out. (And neither could this reviewer, who was in for a few surprises too!)

This clever film, part psychological drama, part gothic thriller, presents comments on several important issues: Innocence can be destroyed by interfering hypocritical 'moralists' who do more harm than good. It also highlights the right to be natural and yourself, even to be a non-conformist, irrespective what others may think. There are also other elements in the film: the role of dolls and birds, and their use as allegory, the relationship between brother and sister, between Àngel and his friend, and the tragic history of the housekeeper's son.

The cinematography is top class, from the surreal under water scenes to the indoor shots, where a gothic atmosphere is created by ramshackled walls, broken windows and bats hanging from the rafters. The soundtrack has an ominous feel to it, and drags the viewer relentlessly along. Apart from an excellent script, the other outstanding element of the film is the acting. I found the acting superb, be it the gentle housekeeper with her secrets, the over-zealous Mona or the exuberant Àngel and Ema. 'La Tutora' is a complex, intelligent film with a lot of food for though, and in my view Iván Noel's best to date. This is a film that I will watch again. I score this film an excellent 9.5/10.

Homophobia, mental illness, sexual precociousness, vigilantism, child sex abuse, betrayal, paranormal phenomena, and revenge: all of this swirls together in Ivan Noel's philosophical horror film The Tutor. The end result, disturbing to most of us on multiple levels, is both highly entertaining and thought-provoking.

Mona is hired, she thinks, to educate Angel and Ema, 11-year-old orphaned brother and sister whom she soon discovers live well beyond "free range." Whether some events are real or paranormal or hallucinatory is unclear at times. And that, it turns out, is as intended. What is actually going on is indicated by several hints quite early, but as sometimes happens, the most definitive clue was too subtly presented (for me) and I only learned about it in the "Making Of" special feature on the Alive DVD. But in the end, it all makes sense.

How intense is this film? After watching it, and especially the ending, I was glad to have the "Making Of" available, to remind myself that the actors are not the characters. Running with that idea also allows me to tell myself that rather than a proffered path forward, The Tutor instead represents Ivan Noel's primal scream of pain, dedicated to all victims of moral extremism.

Where "extremism" begins is a debate that will long endure. Meanwhile, here is an interesting movie, well worth watching.

Artsy trash only good for fashionable viewers. The entertainement value of this wearisome flick is below zero. Extremely slow dialogues and character development, no question ever gets a clear answer, muddy storyline, smug display of child nudity as a cheap appeal to the main audience who would otherwise desert this pretentious rubbish.

If you care nothing about photography, music scores and intellectual gobbledygook, and are just looking for an intelligent, involving horror story, do yourself a favor and stay away from this pretentious nonsense.

Henry James' wonderful 'Turn of the Screw' story provides, surely, the ideal scenario for an Ivan Noel film. There's stiff opposition: several exceptional versions already exist plus Benjamin Britten's unique chamber opera.

The story is deliberately ambiguous - do the 'ghosts' exist?; are the children under the control of other-worldly spirits?; is the governess imagining things which lead her to false conclusions?

The key differences in this adaptation are: 1) setting the story in the age of the computer (not, I think, a great idea when you see how little the governess uses it to connect to the outside world and the uncle in particular; 2) the children are feral rather than the product of an upper class upbringing; 3) the denouement makes use of IN's trademark unexpected twist.

As in his previous work, the director makes wonderful use of music (sadly, in this film, not his own) including the haunting 'malo - I am bad' theme from Britten's score. Other 'fingerprints' include beautiful shots of nature (landscapes/skies/insects, etc), memorable framing shots (Angel seen distantly through a door portal, sitting outside against a stone ball - famous painting?? and behind a net curtain, use of water as a theme with dark connotations, plus strikingly beautiful close-ups of faces.

The portrayal of Angel and Ema by Valentino Vinco and Malena Alonso, is superb throughout They are always believable, reacting to each other in a totally realistic way given their background. I especially enjoyed the laughing fit which inevitably concludes their first 'formal' meal. The housekeeper, naive but all-knowing, is superbly played. I was put off almost immediately by the uncle who, unfortunately, has an annoying 'click' to his speech and is lacking in visual expression Christina Maresca, 'La Tutora' herself (Mona she certainly is!) acts well (a regular in IN's films). We steadily lose empathy with her - I suspect this is deliberate. As a teacher she would not pass her probationary year! You cannot begin by declaring to your children, "I'll be your teacher and your friend": it just doesn't work. She then tries her utmost (unsuccessfully, thank God) to impose her own middle class moral judgements on the children, failing spectacularly to understand where they are coming from. The film challenges her judgements. Statements such a "You will obey/respect me," "They should not sleep in the same bedroom," "It's improper that you bathe outside wearing nothing" are never reasoned and when she comes out with "It's not natural to be naked" (what could be more so?) my anger was such that all sympathy was lost! I think, and hope, that IN is challenging us to consider these issues from an unbiased standpoint (as opposed to media-driven pressures) in much the same way as Nicholas Roeg does in 'Walkabout' (1970).

Maybe not the best of his films but certainly a worthy release, deserving acclaim. One final question. The (alternative) title: surely 'Grazed Knees' rather than 'Burnt Knees'?