If the movie verse has taught us anything, it’s that if a young, idealistic teacher walks into a turbulent, multiracial Parisian classroom, all of his or her badass, wise-cracking pupils will eventually emerge as kinder, better people. The Class, the winner of last year’s Golden Palm at Cannes, begs to differ. François Bégaudeau, the film’s co-writer and star, spent a year teaching in a less than salubrious neighbourhood before turning his experiences into a best-selling novel. Under the socially conscious eye of director Laurent Cantet (Heading South, Time Out), Bégaudeau and his former charges have now workshopped this lively, unapologetic, only quasi-fictionalised version of their time together.
Veterans of such saccharine self-improving scholastic environments as To Sir, With Love and Freedom Writers will recognise the beats beneath the neo-realism. As with the latter title The Diary of Anne Frank becomes a springboard for self-expression when Marin – Bégaudeau’s alter ego – encourages his frequently wilful students to compose a self-portrait in the same candid style as the unfinished Dutch memoir. Our young, swaggering Professeur has, in the way of these things, more than enough moxy to match wits with the cheekiest classroom monkey but when your wards form a microcosm of inner-city life and ills, keeping it real isn’t always enough.
This, we repeat, is not the movie verse. In The Class every step forward is matched by a corresponding step in the opposite direction. The steady improvement of a young Asian student is counter pointed by Marin’s failings regarding a young student of Malian descent. It is a tribute to the authenticity of the M. Cantet’s organic approach that when Marin makes inappropriate use of the word ‘skank’, we, accordingly, feel let down.
It’s a neat sleight of hand; the camera snakes and lurks around the room to approximate documentary moves; the chatter is naturalistic and volatile; the kids are not, necessarily, alright.
We can guarantee it’s the least boring two hours you’ll ever spend in a classroom.