The Class/Entre les Murs (2008) - Intense, grueling French film sets the teacher's role up for debate

♥♥♥♥

+ Best French Movie of the Year

Eclectic poster for Laurent Cantet's The Class

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In The Class, we follow a well-meaning, yielding teacher in a Parisian suburban school, who tries to teach a class of teenagers but encounters opposition.

This is a deeply engaging film, which clearly wants to inspire debate and doesn't draw its own conclusions for the audience. 
It is a very personal work for co-writer/lead actor François Bégaudeau (Jacques (2008), writer-actor), as the film is based on his semi-autobiographical novel. He co-wrote the script with Robin Campillo (Eastern Boys (2013) writer-director) and director Laurent Cantet (Human Ressources/Ressources Humaine (1999), writer-director).
The film contains some laudably achieved situations that ring 100 % true. The Class is also a very French, cerebral film without music or any relationships outside of its school setting, [in line with its original title, which translates to Within the Walls.] It is an intense investigation of the teacher role and the challenges that a teacher faces in a multi-cultural classroom.
The frustrating elements of The Class will probably make some viewers leave it prematurely. It is dispiriting and could be described as a quasi 'teacher's horror' film, as the protagonist teacher only SPOILER gets into deeper and deeper trouble with his class as the film progresses.

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Watch the trailer with English subtitles here

Cost: 2.5 mil. €
Box office: 13.2 mil. €
= Big hit
[The Class was the first French film since Maurice Pialat's Under the Sun of Satan/Sous le Soleil de Satan (1987) to win the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, the most prestigious film festival in the world and the most important film prize around besides the Oscars. The film was also Oscar-nominated as Best Foreign Film but lost to the Japanese Departures/Okuribito (2008). The Class enjoyed a very impressive US run (considering that the film is very serious, very French, without stars, sex or violence), which earned it 3.7 mil. $ (28 % of the total gross.)]

What do you think of The Class?