The Class | Laurent Cantet, 2008
The first French film to win top prize at the prestigious Cannes film festival for 21 years, Laurent Cantet’s The Class – Entre les Murs; literally meaning “Between the Walls” – has certainly exceeded its own tidy ambition. Set in Paris at an inner city middle school, the film follows a focused young teacher as he attempts to tame a trying group of boisterous teenagers over the course of a year. The tale is actually a self-autobiographical one, written by lead actor François Bégaudeau – a writer who has worked for Cahiers du Cinéma and published a handful of successful novels – about his trials and tribulations working in a similar situation during the nineties. Now, with the help of experienced French writer/director Laurent Cantet he is able to bring this rather personal story to the screen first-hand by turning his hands to acting. The Class takes a somewhat well-trodden concept and breathes new life into it; we’ve all seen movies that take a passionate teacher and class of unruly students from poor backgrounds, mixing them together with a dose of overbearing drama to reach a typically positive conclusion. The Class, however, doesn’t allow the audience such an easy ride. As the title suggests we are there for every bit of heightened tension and every single inspirational moment, though without the usual melodrama.
The Class deftly recreates the kind of problems to be found in a multi-ethnic Parisian middle school, and perhaps more than usual we should be thankful to the writer for this. Not only do the real-life struggles of Bégaudeau allow us a valuable insight into this world, his performance is also surprisingly adept given his lack of acting experience. Of course, with such a young cast it is often difficult to maintain this high standard – each student plays his/herself in the film – but performances are strong and genuine without exception. I can’t help but compare The Class with an English television series of a similar setup – Teachers, as it was imaginatively titled, offered a similar look at the middle school tier of education over in England, though with an exceedingly neurotic central character and general hilarity throughout. Where Teachers took the inadequacies of national eduction and poked fun at it to great success, The Class takes its positives and highlights them; the passion of these teachers and their daily battle to connect with an increasingly restless audience. This isn’t an ambitious film by any means, neither does it have a general direction in which we are encouraged to look, it does however offer us – without an underlying social or political message – a look at today’s schools that makes for highly engaging viewing.
Our Rating:
