The Class / Entre les Murs

The Class is an enthralling, improvised drama about a French school, writes MICHAEL DWYER.

WORK EVIDENTLY fascinates Laurent Cantet, the richly imaginative French writer-director who has explored that theme from different angles in four feature films.

Cantet's debut, Human Resources, found wrenching drama in its depiction of industrial conflicts during the transition to a 35-hour working week in France. He followed it with Time Out/L'Emploi du Temps, which acutely observed a businessman's desperately elaborate plan to conceal his newly unemployed status from his family. In Heading South/Vers le Sud, the workers were penniless Haitian teen males, but the dramatic focus was on the sex tourists they served, who happened to be well-off, middle-aged American women.

Cantet deservedly received the Palme d'Or at last year's Cannes Film Festival for The Class, in which the protagonist is a teacher at an inner city Paris school. Substantially improvised through a workshop process, this enthralling film follows one academic year in the lives of the teacher and his class of 14-year-olds.

The Classis based on a book by François Bégaudeau, a 36-year-old teacher who wrote it while on leave of absence. Bégaudeau himself plays the central role of the dedicated teacher with such charisma that other roles surely will beckon, and he may never return to the classroom. Like him, none of the cast had any previous acting experience. Most of the children Cantet chose were found in the same school, and they take their own first names in the film. With one exception, their parents are played by their own parents.

The title of Bégaudeau's novel, Entre les Murs, translates literally as "between the walls". That is apt in the context of a film that never moves outside the school where it's set and was shot. Cantet's mobile use of HD cameras contributes to the energy it generates and ensures that the setting never turns claustrophobic.

As it addresses the hopes, dreams and failures of that multi- racial class, the film presents a microcosm of contemporary France. It extends its scope to encompass the staffroom, where one teacher reveals his sheer frustration with his class, and parent-teacher meetings where the ethnic and economic circumstances of the parents inform their children’s personalities.

Bégaudeau's teacher is a man with a capacity for making mistakes, and his portrayal is far removed from that contrived archetype, the supposedly inspirational teacher too often found in such scenarios. His thoughtless dismissal of one girl as a pétasse, which can mean a slut, illustrates his human propensity to lapse, and it has repercussions.

His fictional students are similarly drawn as complicated characters, alternately prompting the viewer’s sympathy and disapproval. They tease him by asking if he’s gay. One girl rejects the conventions of grammar with the riposte, “No one says that.” Inevitably, some pupils fare better than others, and towards the end, a girl who has featured peripherally gets to say that she hasn’t learned anything over the whole year.

On a superficial level, The Classhas the feel of a documentary, enhanced by its fly-on-the-wall shooting style. However, it would be more accurate to describe it as a fully formed drama evolved through the improvisational process favoured by Mike Leigh.

Cantet's astutely paced film becomes more and more involving as we get to know the pupils and to care for them and their prospects, and as we empathise with the teacher and the responsibilities and challenges facing him. The Classis fascinating and irresistible.

Directed by Laurent Cantet. Starring François Bégaudeau 12A cert, Queen's, Belfast; IFI/Light House, Dublin, 128 min★★★★★