'ENTRE LES MURS' (2008). REVIEW, by Naouel Abbadi

The Class, winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2008, plays like the role of a documentary with subtitles. The fiction is so much close to reality that when the bell rings, you feel ready to leave the class as well…

We follow a teacher and his students at a French middle school. There are discipline problems and a complaint about the teacher. Meetings are held. Actions are taken. Somehow they manage to complete the school year.

What you come to realize, however, is that not even the shrewdest or luckiest documentary filmmaker could manage to be always in the right spot when something dramatic is about to occur. In fact, this is a drama, but a drama so close to reality that it has the ring of truth.

© Haut et Court

The film doesn't fall into the easy clichés of the teacher at the bad school miraculously winning over the kids. The Class is an engaging drama and a chance to see how schooling works in France. It is ultimately a fascinating, sometimes exhilarating movie that seems to make a genuine contact with the classroom, and shows us an educational system struggling, and managing to survive.