The Class (Laurent Cantet, 2008): France

Reviewed by Natalie Envall. Veiwed at the AFI Film Festival, Archlight Hollywood.

The Class truly disappointed me. I decided to go and see this movie impulsively. At first I was planning on going to Everlasting moments, but after hearing this movie was supposed to be really good I decided to go see it.

The Class follows a teacher, François (François Bégaudeau), who teaches at a school in a tough neighborhood in Paris. The plot pretty much follows his time teaching in the classroom; conflicts with the students occur, such as their refusing doing assignments and getting into arguments with the teacher when he verbally abuses them.

The movie shows the difficulty that teachers have of not getting too involved. The relationship between teacher and student is suppose to be platonic, but sometime the lines get crossed, since they are after all human and sometimes arguments and difficult situations get too heated not to be taken personally.

While it is a good story to tell and I understand the message he is trying send, I thought this movie was really boring . It had no real depth, you don’t get to see anything outside of the class room and I think that if we had gotten to see some of the students in their home environment or even the teacher it would have made the movie much more interesting.

The movie just shows the shallow aspects of the problems and nothing really happens. It’s a movie you can easily fall asleep to, but if you are into movies with important messages with very little action this is a movie for you.

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Published:
11.10.08 / 12am
Category:
AFI Filmfest 2008, Films