“The Class” is a lesson in adroit filmmaking.
Set in a Parisian working-class neighborhood collège, the film spends an absorbing year in the French language class of Mr. Marin. The portrait of an ethnically-diverse classroom of 14 and 15 year-olds in the American equivalent of late middle school is unsentimental and extremely forthright. Affixed with a purposely unassuming title, the film, based on a 2006 novel, is a thoughtful, engrossing study of daily classroom dynamics. There’s no grand statement or powder-keg denouement. Essentially, “The Class” is a Year in the Life motif that is plausible and compelling (so it’s filled with both familiar and new) without resorting to dubious histrionics or pyrotechnics. Director Laurent Cantet clearly knows the crucial difference between the dramatic and melodramatic; thus, he makes the ordinary absorbing.
Like so many Western European nations, France is burbling with concepts of national identity as more international travelers make their homes in a new, more unified Europe. Marin’s roll of students is filled by the children of immigrants from countries such as Mali, Morocco, Algeria and China and the topics of identity and assimilation course through almost every class project. Young but still an experienced teacher, Marin understands that these are core issues to his pupils, even if they aren’t consciously aware of their importance. (A parent-teacher night montage underscores the salient topic.)
Played by François Bégaudeau, Marin moves with ease through the rows of desks in his H&M inspired attire, chiding and cajoling for answers and insight, yet not with desperation. He is attractive, probing and no-nonsense but with a touch of arrogance, which suggests pride before the fall semester. Begaudeau — who penned the novel and co-wrote the screenplay – excels in his first film role. (Like Ryan Gosling in “Half Nelson” there’s an unaffected quality to this teacher, though none of the demons of Dan Dunne.)
Most of the two dozen students are portrayed by first-time actors who demonstrate a keen knack for unpretentious performances. When Marin presses for reactions to his inquisitive questions, the responses have a natural tenor. The neophyte cast nicely captures the way kids test a teacher, even one with Marin’s moxie, figuratively pushing and prodding to take control while the film also displays how teens can pivot from indifference to outrage (and back again) in an instant. It feels and sounds authentically like an actual classroom mixture of cocky and shy, outspoken and introverted young teens. At times, there’ a cacophony of backchat, but it’s not cluttered.
This is because Cantet oversees a film which feels both loose and controlled. The camera work by Pierre Milon scans the class with a documentarian’s intimacy but there’s no theatrical flitting. Editor Robin Campillo, who also co-wrote the screenplay, is equally focused and measured.
“The Class” also delves into the backroom machinations of the school. Marin is a reserved observer in a teachers’ lounge fraught with frustration over difficult students. He also serves on several school committees and the film cleverly and understatedly showcases how a serious committee discussion regarding discipline devolves into a silly debate about coffee machines. A disciplinary hearing also becomes a farce because a parent is not furnished with a translator while spoken to with the tippy-toed obsequious tone of administrative babble.
“The Class” doesn’t lecture as much as it observes. So the film ends ambivalently, like all school years, neither a conclusion nor a beginning, just with a bit of wisdom parsed out.
One Film Beyond 