Written by Julian Fellowes
Directed by Michael Engler
Starring Miranda Otto, Haley Lu Richardson and Elizabeth McGovern
Running time: 1 hour and 43 minutes

by Deborah Krieger

The Chaperone has the problem of being about someone who is interesting-adjacent. Based on the best-selling novel by Laura Moriarty, The Chaperone is a fictionalized account of the coquettish and provocative actress Louise Brooks’ (Haley Lu Richardson) first summer in New York City, as seen through the eyes of the thoroughly ordinary wife and mother Norma Carlisle (Elizabeth McGovern). Before she was bob-haired Lulu in Pandora’s Box, Louise Brooks was a rebellious dancer who first came to New York from Wichita, Kansas, to study with the famed dancers Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn. As was appropriate for 1922, she was accompanied by a chaperone, Alice Mills, about whom we actually know very little. The Chaperone, then, imagines this mysterious woman as someone who was touched, briefly, by liveliness and grace and talent, caught in the light of Louise’s shining star as she comes to New York for reasons of her own.