The Class (2008)
The Class(FR) Directed by Laurent Cantent Written by Francois Begadeau Starring Francois Begadeau; Francek Keita; Rachel Regulier; Esmerelda Ouerti;
Francois Begaudeau has been a singer, sportswriter, novelist, and teacher. With The Class, he adds actor to the list, while adapting his own novel, (which translates roughly to) Between Two Walls, for the screen. Director Laurent Cantet (Human Resources) uses HD cameras to capture the inner-workings of a Parisian high school, and more specifically, a French class taught by Francois Marin (Begaudeau). Unlike some of the formulaic American films of the type (Higher Learning, et al), The Classis after a kind of verite realism, and does not set the film on a course for Francois to save the day. The view is narrow as we rarely leave the school grounds, our purview limited to information we pick up about the teachers and students along the way. Modern day Paris is rife with issues over immigration and the school is reflective of the face of a more open, newish European Union. The students here are largely made up of immigrants, or the children of immigrants, and on the whole are members of families struggling to make it while confronting enormous cultural challenges like race, language, social interaction, and the other myriad difficulties of assimilation. Francois is portrayed as an experienced young teacher who is dedicated to his job, but far from perfect, and there are times when he allows his emotions to get the better of him, breaking a cardinal rule by engaging in unwinnable tete-a-tetes with adolescents. While he attempts to employ the Socratic method in class, encouraging the kids to ask questions, the merits of this approach are sometimes lost on these fourteen and fifteen year olds. His class is a mix of talking, learning, laughing, arguing, and seemingly only dollops of actual rote studies. The drama emerges out of the students who buck his tenuous authority, namely Souleymane (Francek Keita), a Malian immigrant, Esmerelda (Esmerelda Ouerti), the class spokesperson, and Khouba (Rachel Regulier), a former top student who is convinced her teacher has a grudge against her. Long months of workshops went into creating the documentary- like realism we see on screen, a process that clearly paid off. One of the strongest films of 08.