Our two screenings of 'The Class' (French title 'Entre Les Murs' or 'Between the Walls') brought in 594 people and mixed reviews.Despite the fact that 'The Class' was the first French film in 21 years to win the Palme D'or (the top prize) at Cannes and that it is one of the most highly rated films by critics (97% on Rotten Tomatoes (100% from the 30 top critics) and 92% on Metacritic) it remains a film over which audiences are quite a bit less positive.
Check out the links below to read some reviews on 'The Class'.
Rotten tomatoes Top Critics reviews
Metacritic review site
Also, I recommend that you look at the excellent production notes (select press kit from this link) should you be interested in more information on what the author/teacher (François Bégaudeau) and director (Laurent Cantet) hoped to accomplish with this film.
Here are some excerpts from the production notes that hopefully will tease you into reading the ful notes.
François Bégaudeau. The aim of my book was to document one school year, sticking close to daily experiences. So there was no clear narrative line, no fictional plot centered around any one particular event. There were disciplinary meetings, but they were mostly events among many which followed their course. With this material, Laurent and his co-screenwriter Robin Campillo extracted the storyline that they were interested in. My book was the result of situations ; Laurent and Robin chose some of these to mold into fictional form. They did not choose "characters" in the strict sense of the term ; they constructed them, sometimes by grafting together several kids from the book.
Laurent Cantet. We wrote an initial summary, a backbone of the film, destined to be irrigated and modified throughout the year of preparation according to a plan I had already tried out in Ressources humaines (Human Resources). The idea was to use an existing school and during the filmmaking process, to integrate all the players of academic life. The first door that we knocked on was that of the Françoise Dolto Junior High in Paris' 20th arrondissement. It was the right one (we would have filmed there, if the school wasn’t undergoing construction). All the adolescents in the film are students at Dolto ; all the teachers teach there, including Julie Athénol is the counselor and Mr. Simonet is the assistant principal. With the exception of Souleymane’s mother, whose role is the most fabricated, the parents in the film are those of the students in real life.
Laurent Cantet. Those moments where the class discussion deviated are the ones that interested me the most, and the film is built on them. Few teachers take as many risks with their students : the risk to fall off track, the risk to fail. It is obviously easier to say that one has successfully transmitted this or that piece of knowledge through a lecture than by some induced method. This requires a sang-froid for which many people would criticize François, and for which many people would envy him. There's a bit of Socrates in that man!
François Bégaudeau. Most films about adolescents show them as monosyllabic. For us, without a doubt, the dominant force of The Class is the loquacious and lively adolescent, rather than melancholic and inhibited. Each spectator is free to imagine Esmeralda daydreaming alone in her room, but the film only shows her in the classroom, where her presence makes her a pure slice of life. The Class deals with how the lacunae of language affect everyone. All the students are susceptible to masterful moments of talk, but this can be derailed at any moment. Not only for the students, but also for the teacher.
Laurent Cantet. The film does not try to defend nor accuse either side. They all have their weaknesses and outbursts, their moments of grace and pettiness. Each one can exhibit both clairvoyance and blindness, comprehension and injustice. I even have the impression that the film expresses something paradoxically positive: a school is sometimes very chaotic, useless to cover its face, there are moments of discouragement but also great moments of grace, immense happiness. And from this great chaos, a lot of intelligence can be born.
François Bégaudeau. A school constantly creates wonderful situations. But we all know at the same time that it is, in the end, discriminatory, unequal, it fabricates reproduction, etc. This tension was at the basis of the film. More generally, I find the same kind of tension in my favorite films. In the present of each scene, there is so much energy at work that everyone is saved. But the progression of the screenplay takes us to rupture, impossibility, catastrophe. Each situation is a utopia, but the sum of situations is tragic. This is exactly the case in Laurent’s film. We can see in it the story of a failure. On the other hand, we can retain moments of a concrete utopia.
Your thoughts regarding the film would be much appreciated.
Julian D.
