The Class

If there‘s one scene that captures most succinctly the challenge of educating and engaging a modern, multicultural group of children in The Class, it’s the view from above the playground where the only thing the children have in common is their pathological fascination with patently disaffecting mobiles and iPods. Director Laurent Cantet weaves his closely-knit vignettes with these silent shots that say as much about multiculturalism and education in France as the effortlessly natural and intelligent script. Ostensibly the film follows French teacher Francois Marin’s (Francois Begaudeau, who also co-wrote the script) year teaching his disruptive and largely disinterested class, and yet the narrative is largely irrelevant because The Class reveals so much of itself through smaller details. Its greatest strength lies in its quiet, progressive pacing; it steadily extracts drama with utilitarian vigour from otherwise innocuous space, and the breadth of issues it touches on whilst maintaining its even-handed editing marks The Class as textbook film-making of the highest standard.