The Class

Rating:

* * * * *

Verdict:

Masterful and unsentimental classroom movie reinvents the docudrama.

It sells last year's Cannes Palme d'Or winner short to call it a docudrama: it puts one in mind of recent films like Michael Winterbottom's

The

Road to Guantanamo

or Paul Greengrass'

Bloody Sunday

- both great films - and to say that this is in the same mould gives the wrong impression.

This is particularly so given its subject matter - it's about a year in the life of a teacher and his class of 14-year-olds - because teacher movies are so often mercilessly sentimentalised and lachrymose drivel (note: if you really like

Dead Poets Society

, you may not get this).

Unlike classic docudrama which interprets, meticulously recreates and then stages a dramatised reality for the camera,

The Class

lets a particular kind of reality be born anew in front of us. The result is as exhilarating a film as I've seen in years.

It's based on a semi-autobiographical 2006 novel called

Entre Les Murs

(the film's French title, it means

Within The Walls

) by Francois Begaudeau. That would be the same Begaudeau who plays the main character, Francois Marin, a handsome and personable young teacher of French. His students (played by students from the school, selected by a workshopping process) are mostly of African and Caribbean extraction: his subject is, for many, a second language.

The "script", which Begaudeau wrote with Cantet, was really little more than a suggestion of themes on which teacher and pupils might riff and the action that unfolds has a verisimilitude that can be uncomfortable: the students conjure that mix of truculent defiance and irresistible logic that has always challenged teachers and Begaudeau's teacher is a genuine man making often bad decisions for good reasons.

I'd hate to give the impression that the film is some sort of worthy ethnography of the classroom. In fact, a story arc of knuckle-whitening tension develops, so subtly that we don't see it happening. I won't spoil it, but should note in passing that it leads to a heartstopping and finally heartbreaking climax involving one student's mother, one of the few actors in the cast.

Of course, it's all by design but it seems like it isn't: it's a cinematic alchemy that verges on the miraculous.

This is a movie that sneaks up on you, that, like a good teacher, gets your attention and respect without ever demanding it. And you don't really realise how good it is until it's over.

Peter Calder

Cast:

Francois Begaudeau, Wei Huang, Esmeralda Ouertani, Franck Keita

Director:

Laurent Cantet

Running time:

128 mins

Rating:

M (contains offensive language) In French with English subtitles