By now, American moviegoers are familiar with the "teacher struggling to get through to the kids" Hollywood formula.
From "The Blackboard Jungle" in the 1950s to TV shows such as "Room 222" and "Welcome Back, Kotter" in the 1960s and 1970s, to the high-profile, star-studded productions of recent years ("Mr. Holland's Opus," "Dead Poet's Society," "Dangerous Minds"), it is a tried-and-true genre. The blueprint for this kind of movie is "Goodbye Mr. Chips," released in 1939.
The latest in the line is the French film "The Class," which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes last year and was nominated for a best foreign film Oscar.
Writer/star François Bégaudeau and Director Laurent Cantet have pushed the envelope more than a bit (maybe they shrank the envelope?), so don't go in expecting a paint-by-numbers, feel-good "teacher/student" film.
"The Class" screens as if it were a documentary, and much of that has to do with the fact that Bégaudeau himself was a teacher and based his novel (the source for the screenplay) and character on his own experiences. The students in "The Class" are not professional actors, and the troupe improvised a lot of the script after Bégaudeau and Cantet and the students worked for months developing it in an improv workshop.
The camerawork, by cinematographer Pierre Milon, is a visual equivalent to eavesdropping and adds a lot to the feel of the movie. It's almost as if one is watching a piece of cinéma vérite.
It's a richly layered film that demands attention and - for me anyway - a few hours or even days in which to fully sink in.
The movie takes place at a high school (possibly a middle school; the kids are 13-15) in a multiracial section of Paris. At the start of a new school year, the teachers meet and discuss priorities, hopes and concerns for the coming semester. Francois (played by Bégaudeau) is a teacher who seems to honestly care about the kids and his job to teach them.
Most of the film takes place in his classroom - the novel's title, "Entre les Murs," translates aptly as "between the walls" - and there are occasional side trips to the teachers' lounge and the principal's office.
The story unfolds slowly but the pace is not without purpose. We get to know a number of the students: the smart Asian, Wei, whose mom is in danger of being deported; the tough guy from Mali, Souleymane; and the sassy Arab, Sandra, among them.
We get to know more about them through an assignment imposed by Francois, who teaches French. It involves a written "self portrait" and is an exercise aimed at getting the kids to be introspective, to get in touch with what they are feeling (early teen years, if I remember, can be quite confusing) and become more familiar with the nuances of the French language. Many of these immigrant kids struggle with their new language and that is a source of frustration.
Francois tries his best at first to be a pal more than an authority figure, but gradually we see that while he is never too hard-nosed, he's not ever going to be one of the gang. It's not his fault, nor is it the fault of the students.
In act three, several conflicts reach fruition. In class, Francois remarks that two of the girls are "acting like skanks" and then has to defend himself by saying he never meant they were such, merely acting as such. After sending a boy to the principal for misbehaving, the teacher finds the incident gets blown to a proportion he never intended and the kid faces expulsion, and with that possible deportation.
"The Class" is never a cut-and-dry story and manages to stay far away from the clichés of the genre.
It may be too slow and too character-driven for those who want a "Breakfast Club" redux or are expecting a French version of "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," but there's a reason it won at Cannes and was nominated for an Oscar. Most of the pundits figured it was lock for that award.
It's a well-written, complex and finely crafted film.
"The Class" is playing at the Moxie Cinema during April.
Jim Wunderle owns Wunderle Sound Services and is a Springfield freelance writer and musician. He can be reached at info@wunderlesound.com.
