France | 2008 | col | 128 mins | based on Laurent Bégaudeau's book | dir. Laurent Cantet, with François Bégaudeau | cert. PG
Take a classroom full of outspoken, multi-ethnic teens from a tough Parisian junior high school, none of them professional actors, add a real-life teacher trying to make a difference, and you’ve got Laurent Cantet’s fascinating portrait of the new France, triumphant winner of the 2008 Palme d’or. François Bégaudeau, from whose non-fiction account of teaching in just such a school the film is adapted, plays himself in this unsentimental, superior addition to the canon of classroom movies, set over the course of an academic year. With his previous films Human Resources, Time Outand Heading South, Cantet has pioneered a new kind of social cinema, one that explores the key issues of our day and avoids sermonizing or easy conclusions. Perhaps the finest and most important example of his work yet, The Class steps back from picking sides in the pivotal wrangle over teaching philosophies – essentially disciplined tradition versus free-form improvisation – at its heart. 'The film does not try to defend nor accuse either side,' says Cantet, 'I even have the impression that [it] expresses something paradoxically positive: A school is sometimes very chaotic... and from this great chaos, a lot of intelligence can be born.'
