Just about anyone who’s ever taken an acting class should feel a wave of queasy familiarity watching “The Rehearsal,” a keenly observed coming-of-age drama, about the ways some teachers push budding young thespians to “be honest” to the point of complete, embarrassing exposure. Based on an Eleanor Catton novel — adapted to the screen by writer-director Alison Maclean and her co-writer Emily Perkins — the film follows a class of first-year college students in thrall to a tough-but-inspiring instructor, whom they try to please by taking dangerous risks with their end-of-term production. Using a real-life community scandal as their subject, the troupe gradually comes to realize that the touchy-feely bubble they’ve been living in at school doesn’t really have much to do with real-world moral responsibilities.
James Rolleston stars as Stanley, a shy, athletic type who’s uncomfortable with the demands of the arts but fascinated by his classmates’ emotional freedom. He also seems determined to work in the theater in defiance of his crude, obnoxious salesman father. Stanley’s limited talents and questionable motivations are challenged at every turn by his teacher Hannah (Kerry Fox), whose idea of a good performance doesn’t have much to do with pretense. She like it when her actors stand in front of an audience and spill their dirtiest secrets.
Stanley, as it happens, has a doozy. He’s dating Isolde (Ella Edward), a 15-year-old whose sister is the talk of the tabloids thanks to a recent affair with her much-older tennis instructor. By sheer coincidence, Stanley’s classmates decide to use that affair as source material for their final play, and they urge him to take advantage of his special access to dig up more dirt. In the context of what they’ve been doing all year, turning a sex-crime into art makes sense: It’s bold, confrontational, and culturally relevant. But the very fact that Stanley can’t bring himself to tell Isolde what he’s doing is a cue that maybe something’s wrong with this plan.
After effectively building up tension for most of its running-time, “The Rehearsal” stumbles at the finish line, settling for an oblique ending that doesn’t really engage with the issues the story raises. Maclean (who hasn’t made a feature film since the excellent “Jesus’ Son”) takes a low-key, direct approach with this picture, with a lot of short, explanatory scenes. That works very well for most of the movie’s running-time, but comes off as too soft when it counts. Similarly, while the overall flatness of the young actors generates a pleasing naturalism most of the time, their minimal chops shortchanges the bigger dramatic moments.
That said, the relative restraint to the performances pays off during the film’s two big acting set-pieces: one where Stanley has a breakthrough moment in class by imitating his dad; and another where his boozy, seemingly devil-may-care friend William (well-played by Kieran Charnock) spends his “share something intimate” assignment telling a funny anecdote, all while the girl who went before him is still in tears from describing a personal trauma. Without having to try too hard, these actors innately understand what it’s like to be a self-conscious kid, at once liberated and mortified by exercises where they criticize themselves in public, or touch each other physically.
At its best though, “The Rehearsal” is an incisive character study of two people. One is Hannah, who spends part of her working day playing tough-love guru to a group of easily impressed teens, and the rest of her time cynically chasing down donations for a new theater and trying to lure movie and TV agents to come see her students. And then there’s Stanley, who’s too naive to notice that much of what Hannah does in the classroom is a well-honed act itself, and far more impersonal than she pretends. Throughout the film, Maclean and Perkins toy with the ever-shifting layers of truth and fiction in a theater rehearsal. But they’re also using Catton’s book to comment on how school can sometimes be a poor preparation for life itself. [B]
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