Review: The Class
Even their names are a delight to rattle off. Khoumba. Rabah. Carl. Souleymane. Wei. Cherif. Lucie. Nassim. Agame. Juliette. And so on – 25 students in all. Culled from an urban high school in Paris, the kids in Laurent Cantet’s The Class are no actors. As a consequence, they don’t just speak for their characters, they speak themselves.
This documentary-style film is loosely based on a memoir about teaching French to a group of African kids on the outskirts of Paris by François Bégaudeau, who plays a version of himself named François Marin. The slim and youthful Bégaudeau, who has worked as a film critic and a punk rocker, struggles with his role in the classroom. He naturally prefers critical examination and democratic dialogue, yet attempts to fall back on authoritarian power when things get out of hand.
When Marin puts up a sentence on the board to illustrate the meaning of “succulent,” he writes, “Bill enjoys a succulent cheeseburger.” To which a feisty Algerian girl named Esmeralda retorts, “You always use whitey names. It’s wicked.”
“What names?” replies François.
“Honky names… Honkies, Frenchies, frogs.”
“You’re not French, Esmeralda?”
“Well, I am French, but I’m not proud of it.”
It’s a brand of open dialogue between teacher and student that feels all too rare in classroom dramas.
The Class is an organic sample of present-day France, lifted neatly from all of life’s messiness in a container of walls (the original title of the film is Entre les Murs, or Between the Walls). We follow the 14-year-olds through nine months of a school year as they learn to conjugate nager (“to swim”), write self-portraits, and banter on a assortment of topics ranging from light to loaded. Shame, race, soccer are all treated with an even hand inside the classroom. Active and engaged, these 25 voices propel the film along with a real kinetic energy.
When François is forced to deal with an unruly student, he must come to grips with his powers of discipline — is its use justified? If students aren’t punished when they’ve crossed the line, does that undermine François’s responsibility to impart upon these children the tenet that in society, for every action there are consequences?
Perhaps the most frustrating, yet ultimately satisfying aspect of The Class is that the camera never leaves the classroom. Parents stop by for conferences, and as adversities in the kids’ home lives suggest themselves, François is visibly disturbed.
The audience no doubt empathizes, and in doing so comes to realize that there are infinite back stories dangling from these classroom walls.
