Plenty to admire here. It's a mockumentary which is utterly convincing- it must be largely improvised- and never dull or predictable. It takes the premise of a multicultural suburban Paris classroom as a representation of modern-day France and examines the issues of culture-clashes, respect, authority and autonomy, language and changing standards.
The comedy 'mockumentary' has been done brilliantly (Spinal Tap and The Office for example) but to use the format for a serious subject is a new one on me. Or, at least, I can't think of any other good examples off the top of my head in recent years. It isn't quite verité, it isn't neo-realism; it is a 'mockumentary'. In the culture of reality TV in which we find ourselves, the danger is that any great new ideas are swept aside amongst the deluge of mediocre ones and The Class, though not strictly TV oriented, suffers a little from that. How many people would turn away from this having been bombarded with similar 'straight' documentaries before? That said I don't think whether it gets bums on seats is a fair way of judging the film, on its own terms it's a success.
Taken purely at face value the film is good. A year in the life of a class of rowdy teenagers; sometimes shocking, sometimes touching, sometimes sad, sometimes uplifting. It isn't a Hollywood-style tale of redemption, of bad kids coming good against all the odds because their teacher imbues in them a real sense of self-worth by teaching them about Wagner's Ring Cycle or Chaucer. The kids aren't bad, they're real. Confused, pretentious, a bit muddled, a bit angry and a bit scared. They change, they grow up, they get confused about different things. And their teacher? François Bégaudeau (author of the source novel playing a version of himself), well he's just as confused and frustrated as the kids are- a good man trying to do a difficult job in spite of the handicaps that simply being a human being bring. If the film ends on an up-note, and the classroom relations appear terminally soured after the expulsion of Soulemayne which François tried his hardest to prevent, it comes with the end-of-year pupils versus teachers kickabout. This isn't redemption, this isn't valedictory, this is the exuberant joy that the year is finally over and the holidays are upon them. There may well have been a touching scene where the teacher handed out spiral-bound copies of the pupils' "self-portraits" (the only learning exercise that he was shown to be able to get Soulemayne involved in all year) to the class, but it was small beer compared to what had gone before. François, a good teacher and a good man, in his forlorn attempts to engage the pupils in learning French spoke to them as a teacher and as a peer. Each approach failed, the teacher couldn't persuade them to care about the use of the correct words in the correct context and the peer was never forgiven for one slip where he used the wrong word in the wrong context. That was a wonderfully subtle parallel, I felt.
Beyond the classroom (funnily enough the direct translation of the original title is "between the walls") the film's dialogue on the issues of integrating multiple communities whilst retaining French identity reflects a wider national debate. The issues are identified and examined without conclusions being drawn. The class may be predominantly white and French but a disproportionate amount of time is spent on the minorities and their issues with language, culture and identity. Soulemayne (of Malian heritage) is troublesome and disruptive, isolating himself from the others because of his scholastic difficulties and his feelings of inadequacy. He responds to feelings isolation by becoming further withdrawn, sullen and non-communicative, it is a vicious circle that is a not totally unrepresentative of the responses of minority communities as a whole. Carl (of Caribbean heritage) expresses confusion over his nationality- sometimes describing himself as French and at other times as Caribbean. He is more hostile towards other minorities than the French pupils when he sees them getting more attention. Rabah (Moroccan) feels excluded on the grounds of both his heritage and his Islamic faith. Wei (of Chinese parents) faces language difficulties which restrict his development and, we learn, his mother is threatened with deportation which will jeopardise his promising academic career. The mother of one French pupil complains that his development is being restricted by the 'slower learners' in the class. Everyone has issues, everyone feels entitled to point the finger at the pupils (communities) that are too blame and none will acknowledge their own faults.
Dramatic, well acted, phenomenally edited, profound, funny and entertaining. 9/10
