Directed by:
Laurent CantetCinematography:
Pierre MilonCast:
François Bégaudeau, Agame Malembo-Emene, Angélica Sancio, Valérie Benguigui, Louise Grinberg, Farida Ouchani, Rabah Naït Oufella, Olivier Pasquier (more)VOD (1)
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The greatest lessons are learnt when life enters the classroom. The tense environment of a tough inner-city school where cultures and attitudes often clash is revealed in this award-winning drama based on François Bégaudeau's best-selling novel 'Between the Walls'. Bégaudeau himself stars as an idealistic teacher of a class of unruly 15 year-olds, whose spiky independence present a constant challenge to his sometimes unconventional teaching methods. Featuring an outstanding non-professional cast of real teachers and students, Laurent Cantet's gripping and sharply observed film offers a microcosm of contemporary society and explores the issues and challenges of education today. (Artificial Eye)
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A French Beverly Hills 90210. Yes, I already used this comment in my review for Truffaut’s Pocket Money, but this is because these two movies of his have more in common than it might seem at first glance. It’s just that The Class beats the track of “reality above all" so much that it’s absolutely un-movie-like (in terms of action, tension rise etc.). It might have been a tad better and meaningful if it were a documentary.
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This film is closely related to the Italian film Gomorrah in its style. It is not a classical feature film in the true sense of the word, where the screenplay presents a story to the viewer, but rather a docudrama that subordinates the plot on the screen to the greatest authenticity of the environment, the reality of the behavior of the characters, and the overall testimony about the state of French education. It is necessary to emphasize that Laurent Cantet did not choose an extreme case, but rather an ordinary school from the outskirts of a big city with a number of immigrant children and unmotivated urban poverty. French education suffers from massive truancy and criminal activity, so most schools elsewhere in Europe are relatively better off in this respect. On the other hand, I get the impression that they are trying to catch up with this disadvantage. Given the above, it is not an entertaining film, but rather a truly documentary view of the issue. Overall impression: 80%.
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Photo © Haut et Court
![The Class - Photos](http://image.pmgstatic.com/cache/resized/w663/files/images/film/photos/160/824/160824062_5ac40b.jpg)
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