Madame Sousatzka (1988)

Luckily for “Manek” (Navin Chowdhry), he has a school teacher who knows a prodigy when she sees one, and so recommends to his recently single-mother “Sushila” (Shabana Azmi) that she send him to the eponymous piano teacher (Shirley MacLaine). She’s rather an eccentric woman but she instantly recognises that this lad has skills - and, that he has a few issues too. As his home life becomes more strained and his mum’s business goes down the tubes he begins to lose focus. That’s only made worse by her upstairs neighbour “Jenny” (Twiggy) with whom he becomes just a little bit obsessed. It may be that the rapport between teacher and pupil and a forthcoming chance to prove his mastery of the piano on a grand scale are the necessary steps “Manek” needs to take as he nears an adulthood he craves? It helps that there are some gorgeous piano solos from Chopin and Schumann here, and I thought that aside from turning in a solid effort as the young lad, Chowdhry also did a mean job on the piano-synch work too. Dame Peggy Ashcroft’s “Lady Emily” provides, sparingly, for a benign influence on the proceedings but it’s really all about a MacLaine who portrays her flawed, proud and frustrated character - and I think she does it with some skill. There’s that horrible adage about people who can do and people who can’t teach - and to an extent you see her character almost jealous of the potential of her young charge as he gradually, under her sometimes quite aggressive tutelage, begins to show his true potential! It’s quite an intricately knitted combination of the prolific with the obligatory melodrama, but that latter familial discord element is kept to manageable levels that leaves us with quite an engaging combo of veteran and newcomer and there’s even a ditty from Twiggy, too. The production design is classy, the dialogue doesn’t let the story hang about and though it does sag a little from time to time, is still worth a watch.