reviews
Dir. Laurent Cantet
Rating: 7.4 | 0 User Reviews | Send to Friend
The simple title provides a certain proof-of-advertising: Laurent Cantet's film about a school year in the life of a teacher and his students, rarely, if ever, leaves the confines of the school. When we first see François (François Bégaudeau), a teacher of 13-15 year-olds at a public school in Paris, he's taking a last shot of espresso at a café, before entering back into the fray on the first day back from summer vacation. In short order, we meet a smattering of other teachers, some nervously approaching their first classes, some old-hands, quick to point out which students are "nice" and which ones aren't; and then, just as quickly, we're thrown into François' French class, a multi-cultural hodgepodge of adolescent angst and attitude. There's Esmeralda, a mouthy girl filled to brimming with impatience; Carl (Carl Nanor) a Caribbean kid who loves soccer but is shunned by some of the Africans in the class, including Boubacar and Souleymane (Franck Keita), the latter of whom proves increasingly disruptive, until, finally, a confrontation between him and his teacher leads to further disciplinary action. Despite the setting, though, this isn't a facile paean to the sublime power of teaching, a la Dangerous Minds or Dead Poets Society, rather Bégaudeau, who wrote both the book and screenplay adaptation, culls from his own experience, using a classroom filled with non-actor students (though not his own), to achieve something closely approximating documentary. Using mostly handheld cameras and keeping the lens in tight close-up to the characters, director Cantet dispenses with the standard classroom platitudes and clichéd arcs, to find something new and fresh to reveal. At one point, François is asked point-blank by Souleymane if he's gay -- he says he's not, but this is one film where the characters' private lives remain completely enigmatic and unknown. Through classroom discussions, parent/teacher conferences and staff meetings, we only ever get to know François through his work, so when the normally implacable teacher finally loses his cool and allows a dangerous chain-reaction to occur in his classroom, we can only guess at how much he eventually blames himself for the end result. By the end of the year, as the students are ready to explode out of the building on the last day of school, Bégaudeau offers one last snapshot of the teacher we've come to admire, unable to mollify a student who believes, firmly, that she has learned nothing at all during the school year. He stammers something, looks away, comes back, but can't wash the look of placid despair out of her eyes.
0 User Reviews
Add A Review
