Penguin Bloom

Based on a true story, Penguin Bloom follows Naomi Watts’ Sam Bloom as she’s paralyzed from the waist down after an accident – with the narrative detailing Sam’s recovery and her family’s attempts at nursing an injured magpie back to health. Filmmaker Glendyn Ivin, working from a script by Shaun Grant and Harry Cripps, delivers a progressively engrossing drama that benefits substantially from the top-tier work of its stars, as both Watts and Andrew Lincoln, cast as Sam’s concerned husband, elevate the proceedings on a continuing basis with their compelling, captivating efforts – with the story’s decidedly familiar nature rarely, as a result, as problematic as one might’ve assumed (and feared). (This is despite the shamelessly manipulative bent of virtually everything involving the aforementioned magpie, with this subplot also cultivating an unintentional undercurrent of suspense as the viewer waits for some tragedy to befall the admittedly adorable bird.) The picture’s persistently watchable atmosphere is surely heightened by Ivin’s stirring directorial choices and the ongoing emphasis on genuinely moving sequences, and it’s hard to deny, ultimately, that the film’s closing stretch packs one heck of a palpable emotional punch – which does, in the end, cement Penguin Bloom‘s place as a first-class tearjerker that effortlessly overcomes a somewhat run-of-the-mill plot trajectory.

***1/2 out of ****