THE CLASS (NOT RATED) ***1/2
Directed by Laurent Cantet. 128 minutes.
Starring Francois Begaudeau, Wei Huang, Esmeralda Ouertani and Franck Keita. Released by Sony Pictures Classics.
Laurent Cantet’s Palm d’Or is not so much that old cinematic chestnut about the white teacher spreading his good influence onto the underprivileged ethnic students that Hollywood loves to dredge up every few years, but more about the changing face of France as seen through the eyes of a white teacher whose duty it is to impress the culture of France upon the minds of a multiethnic classroom that includes children from Morocco, Mali, China, the Middle East and various other nations. And they’re a rowdy bunch, but they have a point. Much of the film, which is based on the novel “Between the Walls” by the film’s star, Francois Begaudeau, centers on the student’s antipathy to learning how to decline the French language. The film, and I would imagine, the book balk at the attempt of the faculty in the fictional film’s school to imbed French identity into its 14 and 15-year-old students, many of whom appear to barely feel comfortable living in the nation. And who can blame them?
As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And the film’s teachers, no matter how well intended, cannot escape their upper class superiority in their handling of the children. No other scenes are better examples of the film’s dichotomy than a sequence in which a young, mop headed white teacher rails against his students, arguing that they deserve to remain in their respective ghettos, due to the lack of respect shown to him. Another long sequence in the picture involves the disciplining of Souleymane (Franck Keita), a bright Malian with a bad attitude and a penchant for rough housing. As one character points out, when a student at the school is called in for a discipline-related hearing, they are thrown out of the institution, no exceptions and no circumstantial evidence allowed.
Cantet populates his film with interesting people. There’s, of course, Souleymane, but also Wei (Wei Huang), a shy Asian teenager whose mother faces deportation or Esmeralda or a mouthy Arab girl (Esmeralda Ouertani) who refuses to read aloud in class. In fact, the only character left slightly aloof to the audience is Francois himself, which is strange considering Begaudeau is the author of the book on which the film is based. What are his intentions? He is both champion and oppressor to many of the film’s students and, at times, we wonder what the hell he could be thinking. Yet, he does not really represent the system against which the film appears to be railing. Francois certainly has his flaws, but he’s not exactly the cause of the problem nor the antagonist here.
Cantet’s film has a gritty realism to it and could easily be mistaken for a documentary if one did not know better. The Class feels closer to the work of filmmaker Frederick Wiseman, who directed 1969’s High School, a documentary on high school children in the Vietnam War years, than the director’s previous pictures – Time Out or Human Resources. The film is often funny and charming, and while its portrayal of race relations in France are certainly not as incendiary as Michael Haneke’s bleak Cache or Xavier Gens’ grim Frontier(s), I get them impression that the film is no less angry.
The film’s structure is not that of a typical narrative. Rather than following Francois or any of the students home, much of the action takes place in the classroom as teacher and pupils discuss, discuss, discuss. There are some surprises along the way in the way that youths can often be surprising, relaying something you thought they did not know but did, as well as Francois’ increasingly inappropriate behavior toward his students. There is no exposition and little character development outside of what we learn of the film’s inhabitants as they discuss homework and various lessons. But while Cantet’s picture is decidedly French, its timeliness extends to our nation as well. At the New York Film Festival, the director made a comment that a classroom is not a safety zone from the outside world, but rather a place where all members of the outside world converge, bringing along with them their own issues and culture clashes.
At the film’s end, we see an empty classroom in which
allegedly no child has been left behind. But a strange revelation occurs as
Francois sits at his desk and a young woman approaches him, claiming that she
has learned nothing during the course of the school year. Whether this is
Francois’ fault or not is questionable. But I’d imagine that our own country, which
mirrors or possibly surpasses