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The Class (Entre les murs)

Buzz says:   MPAA Rating: PG-13
Current Showtimes: No showtimes available

It’s a shame when good movies receive generic titles in translation. The Class, or Entre les murs (Between the Walls) approaches the tired, old subject of taming rowdy school children with cinéma vérité flair. Having won the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival last year, you’d think it would have a respectable English title.

Lit teacher-turned-film critic-turned-novelist François Bégaudeau co-wrote the screenplay — based on his 2006 book bearing the same title — with director Laurent Cantet. The semi-autobiographical film stars Bégaudeau as a fictionalized version of himself: François Marin, French teacher at an inner-city school. Each day, the 14-year-old hellraisers in his class push him to the limit with their incessant back-talking and questioning of his authority. We witness one his peers blow his lid in the teacher’s lounge, revealing the racial and class tensions that crop up when middle-class intellectuals try to discipline lower-class kids.

Though his pupils may not recognize it, Marin’s conversations with other teachers reveal him to be a kind of student advocate. For the most part, he favors talking things through to sending troublemakers to the principal. But Marin is no less human than the rest of us, and eventually his frustration gets the best of him. An off-the-cuff remark sets off a chain of events with dire consequences, and several students turn against him. At one point, he must ask himself how long he is willing to negotiate and postpone punishment. Where can he draw the line? And how much of the blame rests on his shoulders?

Of course, The Class isn’t all heartbreak. Though they dismay Marin, the students’ shenanigans often inspire laughter. The handheld camerawork and the actors’ improvisational acting makes the characters’ petty cliquishness, name-calling and adolescent awkwardness feel authentic. Cantet and Bégaudeau show acts of betrayal for what they really are: one person’s bid for another’s approval by discriminating against a common enemy. Beneath every act of toughness lies insecurity.

I have only two complaints. For one, The Class is very “talky.” As in a real classroom, few moments go without one line of dialogue or another. The student-teacher, student-student and teacher-teacher interactions are all engaging, but sometimes we just need a breather. I would also argue that the ending comes abruptly, with too much time elided between the last couple scenes. I’m guessing the filmmakers sought to show school as it is: not a neatly constructed plot following from development to climax to resolution, but a series of events that ends arbitrarily when summer begins.

Should art be made to imitate life? Bégaudeau evidently thinks so.