THE CLASS (ENTRE LES MURS) (France, 2008)
Wednesday, 16th September 2009

If I were to be asked which French film has most impressed me during the last twelve months, my choice would undoubtedly fall on Raymond Depardon’s study of farmers Modern Life, which we are screening in November. That was a film that gained many favourable reviews here, but the French work which won the highest praise of all was The Class which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes last year. The special enthusiasm that it generated was the equivalent of the praise bestowed a year earlier on Couscous which we presented in our 2008/09 season and, as I felt with Couscous, my own view is that while The Class contains much that is brilliant it is an imperfect piece that goes on too long (at 130 minutes it is the longest film in the new season but at least it falls well short of the 154 minutes which Couscous lasted). Nevertheless, whether or not you come to share my reservations, there is no doubt at all that The Class should be seen and that Eastbourne audiences should be given the opportunity to judge it for themselves. Indeed, my own response may have failed to do the piece full justice because, as I will explain, I approached it with an inappropriate comparison in mind which may have coloured my judgment.

I saw The Class following its success at Cannes but before it opened here and there seemed every reason to expect great things of it. The praise at Cannes had been exceptional even for a Palme d’Or winner, and, although it was not a documentary, descriptions of it put me in mind of one of the best French films of recent years – I refer to Nicolas Philibert’s wonderful non-fiction feature Être et Avoir screened by us in 2004 which had a teacher as its central figure and which studied his work during the course of one year at an infants’ school in rural France. The young pupils were immensely engaging and the commitment of the teacher, Georges Lopez, was heart-warming. Although I knew that The Class was played out by actors, there seemed to be a strong parallel. Once again we had a film about a teacher and his pupils and, as with Être et Avoir, we had a structure that was based on following the class in question throughout a whole year. Furthermore, this new film derived from a novel Entre les murs written by a school teacher, François Bégaudeau, based on his own experiences of school life in Paris. In addition to that, the film-maker, Laurent Cantet, had brought in Bégaudeau to work with Robin Campillo and himself on the screenplay for the movie and, even more significantly, he had asked Bégaudeau to head the cast of non-professionals by playing François the teacher who is to all intents and purposes himself. What we would see, therefore, would be not so much a conventional structured drama but Bégaudeau’s interaction with his class as he sought to help his pupils over a period of twelve months.

In one respect at least The Class is a total success. Many a film-maker has chosen to use non-professional actors – one thinks of Vittorio de Sica’s classics such as Bicycle Thieves and Umberto D. and Robert Bresson’s distrust of the acting traits that professional players bring with them – but I have rarely, if ever, seen a film that uses actors so persuasively to suggest, as Cantet’s film does, that we are looking at documentary footage. The sense of authenticity, of eaves-dropping on reality, is quite remarkable. It is, indeed, the case that he chose players whose own lives reflected those depicted on screen. Not only the teachers who appear but also the members of the administration and staff were drawn from people with those very backgrounds, while the pupils were actual pupils and most of the parents who appear are the real-life parents of those students who feature in the film. In many cases the youngsters, coming from various backgrounds and races as befits a multi-cultural school, were asked to present characters close to their own, but it is, of course, less easy than it sounds to behave in front of the camera in a way that seems wholly natural even when appearing as a character similar to yourself. In any case there is the additional fact that certain key figures required the young non-professional players in these parts to play out roles different to themselves as part of the drama designed for the film.

In achieving all of this, I can only regard The Class as a triumph for Laurent Cantet, a writer/director whose work has often, as in Human Resources and Time Out, dealt with the drama inherent on ordinary lives and often among the working classes. Here in The Class he explores life in the 21st century (the book on which the film is based appeared in 2006) as reflected in the interaction between a teacher, one who wants to get through to his pupils and to awaken their interest in becoming better educated, and pupils who lack the more submissive attitudes that children once had. That does not mean that the film is one-sided. François may want to establish a less rigid set-up than once prevailed with more give and take between him and his class but a key moment in the drama occurs when a remark that he makes is seen as going too far. As for the pupils, we become familiar with their backgrounds and, in two cases in particular, we become caught up in their situation – one of these is Souleymane (Franck Keïta) whose future at the school is called into doubt by his behaviour and François’s response to it and the other is Wei (Wei Huang) whose position is influenced by outside factors.

What we have in The Class is a comprehensive view of school-life today, true to the situation in Paris but reflecting also that which pertains elsewhere. For all the good intentions of a teacher like François, much of what we see is downbeat and, in contrast to the much younger children featured in Être et Avoir , those being taught are rarely heart-warming and sometimes downright irritating, but believably so. That’s why the two films are poles apart and why The Class needs to be approached as a very different kind of movie. Do that and prepare yourself for a movie lasting over two hours and you may well find yourself sharing the enthusiasm of those who have lauded this film.
Programme Note by Mansel Stimpson.