Review: Entre Les Murs (The Class)

Review: Entre Les Murs (The Class)

Rating: ***1/2

Nonna's Rating: $$$

Rotten Tomatoes: 97%

In the past few years, I've gone to several French movies on the strength of almost universal acclaim from critics -- and I've been stunned by how much they overpraised the movies (see, for example, my review of Un Conte de Noel --A Christmas Tale). So, I approached this film with much trepidation, knowing only that 97% of 129 reviews reported on Rotten Tomatoes were positive, if not glowing.

My unequivocal admiration for this film has come in two stages. In the first phase, I found the film totally engrossing. Yes, in a past life, I was a teacher, so, like most teachers, I love to watch classroom-centered dramas. But this is a school story different from any I have ever seen. Set in a multi-ethnic Parisian high school replete with belligerent students, we might expect To Sir, With Love or Dangerous Minds -- dramas in which the earnest young teacher struggles at first but eventually wins the hearts and minds of his or her recalcitrant charges. Francois, the film's young teacher does struggle -- and he continues to struggle at the end of the film. There are small triumphs; there are probable tragedies. He's a good teacher, teasing marvelous stuff out of his students. He's a human, flawed teacher, engaging too often in verbal battles with his class and, on one utterly frustrating occasion, saying something he never should have said.

There are also scenes in the teacher's lounge where the faculty talk about their students and their frustrations. We here see that Francois is probably selling his students a bit short. The history teacher tells him he's covering the Ancien Regime in class and suggests Francois' students might read a little Voltaire, possibly Candide. Francois rejects the idea; he believes they are not capable of dealing with such texts. Yet later, one of Francois' least erudite students reports ingenuously that she has been reading The Republic. In scenes in which teachers formally review their students' performances, two students sit on the review council (actually mandated by French school policy). This representation is borne of good, if muddleheaded, intentions, certainly, but the bad behavior of the representatives has long range disastrous consequences.

On a personal note, I was naively surprised by how difficult it was for me to understand the French spoken in the film As a linguist, I should have been particularly aware of how much any language changes in 40 years -- the last time I studied French. On top of that, I only studied literary French (so when the students read from The Diary of Anne Frank in class, I had no trouble understanding the language). What this underscored for me was how futile it is for the French school system to persist in emphasizing the teaching of the conjugation of verb tenses that "only snobs use"-- imperfect subjunctive or passe simple, for example -- in the face of their natural disappearance from spoken language. (Note: I apologize I have not figured out how to make accents appear in this text.)

Well, enough of a linguistic rant. The second phase of my admiration for this film occurred when I read how it was made. The teacher, Francois Begaudeau, who "stars" in the film actually wrote a book about his experiences in the classroom. The director, Laurent Cantet, spent a year filming him, his fellow faculty, his students, and their parents (cinema verite style), but this isn't exactly a documentary -- even though everyone in the film is using his or her own name. The director had them all improvising their interactions. What results is a remarkably honest, compelling portrayal of a year in the life of a Parisian high school. At no point do we note self-consciousness on the part of the "actors." See it. It's a treat.

Nonna's Ratings:

$$$$ = Worth paying the Friday evening price
$$$= Worth paying the Matinee price
$$= Worth a rental
$ = Wait for cable
# = Skip it