'The Class'

Star Tribune (Minneapolis) (MCT) - "The Class," the marvelous Paris schoolroom story that won the Palme d'Or at Cannes last year, has a different title at home. In France, it's called "Between the Walls," which suggests the pressurized environment inside which Mr. Marin (Francois Begaudeau) attempts to teach his unruly, diverse students.

It also implies that educators believe they can seal off students from society at large. Director Laurent Cantet's film is a subtle, truthful lesson in setting more realistic expectations.

After a quick gulp of coffee, Marin starts the first day of the semester, breaking the ice with his new crop of 13-year-olds, and the interactions do not go brilliantly. The kids don't accept his authority, they mulishly resist his efforts to draw them out with probing questions. Marin's job is to teach these diverse kids French, but also to socialize them into the established culture.

Many of them aren't having it. One asks if Marin is gay. He replies "no," and tries to turn the joke into a teachable moment, but the lesson dies in mid-air. When he writes grammar lessons on the chalkboard, using traditional names, one student asks why he chooses "whitey names." Marin says if he used names representing every background in the class "it would never end."

A fair point, but Marin's vision of normal French identity is out of sync with the ethnic, religious and economic realities of his students' lives. The kids are realistically sketched. They can be insolent, but they're not stock juvenile delinquents. Each one has problems at home affecting them in class, from parents who expect academic perfection to troubles with the immigration authorities.

Begaudeau's engrossing performance arises from his first-person familiarity with the material. He is a former schoolteacher whose memoir of his experiences inspired this film. The film doesn't make him a pillar of virtue, only a human mix of ideals and flaws. His snappish observation that a couple of girls in his class are behaving like "skanks" sets off a disruptive, unwinnable argument that poisons the atmosphere for days.

The teachers in the faculty break room are more engaged with the economics of the coffee fund than finding ways to inspire their pupils. With an improvisational cinema-verite style and untrained student actors playing the kids, Cantet's quasi-documentary captures the dynamics of one suburban school and the multicultural learning curve that all of Europe is on today.

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THE CLASS

3 ½ stars

Starring: Francois Begaudeau

Directed by: Laurent Cantet

Rated R for some sequences of violence and language

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© 2009, Star Tribune (Minneapolis)