The Class - "Entre les Murs"

Bea says: We have been caught up in busy lives and have been remiss about seeing films and blogging, but we took advantage of the long Easter weekend and took ourselves off to the Renoir in Bloomsbury to see this much commended French film. A teacher/pupil film, it refreshingly defies the standard formula (inspirational teacher wins students over with catchphrase such as carpe diem, or Bob Dylan lyrics etc etc) and simply shows the ups and downs in the school lives of a teacher and his students - the students are mostly challenging, although occasionally a chink of something else shines through, and the teacher is usually quite good although he gets tired and worn out, and makes mistakes. It's a very real film - it reminded me both of my own school days in a very average comprehensive in a working class neighbourhood with lots of students (myself included) who were the children of migrants, and it struck a lot of chords with my current teaching role, although that is also different in many ways. At the end, everyone has survived the school year bar one pupil. Life goes on. I liked the message.
***

Cecil says: Language is a big part of this film. And let's begin with the title: for me, the French title ('Between the walls') captures the essence of the film far more than the English. The furthest we get from the classroom walls is the playground; we get no sense of any of the characters' lives outside the school - the teacher manages to glean a little information from his pupils through a 'self-portrait' exercise, but for the rest the focus is totally on the intensity and relentlessness of the classroom relationship. The camera work adds to that constant 'in-yer-face' feel, with lots of close-ups and that active, fly-on-the-wall style we associate with so much reality TV these days.

Language is also important because the main character is the French teacher, who uses wonderful methods to try to throw light on some of the words his students don't understand, especially with half his class being non-native speakers. But that's also why I had a problem with the cause of the main conflict between the teacher and his class: he loosely uses an insulting word 'petasse' to describe two of the girls, but for someone with such a feel for language, it is hard to believe he would have opted for this expression in the circumstances (and by the way, where did the subtitler get that word 'skank' from ? Presumably American, it is not even in my Oxford English dictionary...).

For me personally, the film took me back to my days as a language assistant in France 30 years ago (oh my God!!) in a high school; and 26 years ago in a Paris university. My school in the industrial north of France was basically white, working class so had little in common with the class in the film. The flickers of recognition came for me in the staff room morning handshake (yes, you really do have to go round every teacher in the morning and shake their hand) and in the whole structure of head-teacher and admin committee, though I think the concept of student participation in such things may have developed in the last 30 years.

My Paris university teaching experience gave more of a hint of the reality we see in this film. Far more multi-ethnic classes, but the difference being that my students had made it to higher education. It was amusing to see the teacher's problems over the use of names like 'Bill' - the students asked him to use more common names like 'Khoumba' or 'Souleymane', and I can well remember my innocence and ignorance when half my class in 1983 had similar names reflecting their ethnic origins - all quite usual now, but catching me by surprise at the time.

All in all, this as a gripping film - two hours flies by. It is very intense, however, and never lets you relax for more than five minutes. So don't go and see it for light entertainment. Having said that, I thoroughly recommend it...

***1/2