LAURENT Cantet’s “The Class,” which opens the New York Film Festival to morrow night, has already won the top prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and is France’s submission for the foreign-language Oscar.
Excusez moi, but what is all the fuss about?
This documentary-style look at a year in a French middle school is certainly ambitious and ultimately delivers after a pretty tedious first hour.
But to me, it’s certainly not France’s best in a year that also produced Arnaud Desplechin’s superbly crafted dysfunctional family saga “A Christmas Tale,” another Cannes alumnus that’s also showing at Lincoln Center.
But enough of the second-guessing. In concept if not execution, “The Class” is very roughly the reverse of “American Teen,” a documentary about a year in an American high school that was shaped as if it were fiction.
“The Class” is based on a novel by Francois Begaudeau, who also co-wrote the screenplay based on his own experiences as a teacher.
Cantet – a gifted storyteller whose better films include “Human Resources” – has turned it into a pseudo-documentary by casting Begaudeau in the lead role of Francois, along with real-life teachers and students from an actual Paris middle school.
Most of these nonprofessional performances are quite good, and Cantet intensifies the experience by never leaving the school grounds. (The original French title is “Entre les Murs,” or “Between the Walls.”)
Both the classroom scenes and the faculty meetings emphasize the challenge faced by the faculty in accommodating multiethnic students from around the world while still maintaining academic standards and decorum – a fairly universal problem.
It’s far from the feel-good fiction of “Dangerous Minds,” though in some ways “The Class” does recall the undeservedly forgotten “Up the Down Staircase” (1967), which was based on a famously candid book by a teacher about New York’s rapidly changing school system.
Still, I think it’s asking US audiences a lot to wait until halfway through a two-hour movie before something like a plot emerges – something Cantet has said in interviews was done by design.
Eventually, he focuses on Souleymane (Franck Keita), a student from Mali who shows academic promise but whose angry outbursts make him an increasingly problematic presence in Francois’ classroom.
Eventually, Souleymane goes too far. But the school’s response is complicated by Francois’ own inappropriate behavior – and the knowledge that Souleymane will likely be sent back to Mali if he’s expelled.
“The Class” offers no Hollywood ending, but is rewarding for those up to the challenge.
THE CLASS
In French with English subtitles. Running time: 128 minutes. Not yet rated (profanity, brief violence). Plays tomorrow at the New York Film Festival; opens theatrically Dec. 12.