The Chaperone

As the fictional chaperone Norma Carlisle, Elizabeth McGovern drives this story of the matronly Kansas woman who impetuously signs on to accompany the 15-year-old Louise Brooks (Haley Lu Richardson) to New York to join the Denishawn dance company. In light of adapting to a failed marriage, the repressed formality of Norma is pitted against the feisty, flirtatious Louise’s flapper-era libertine views. But Norma has an ulterior motive for her motherly concerns in director Michael Engler’s precursor to the international fame that led Brooks to be notoriously iconic before anonymity sets in.

[NR]