Movie- The Class

The Class is a Oscar nominated film, nominated as best foreign film. It did not win.

I had heard a lot about The Class (2008) most of it very praise worthy. How it was innovative and showed how life in French schools really is, using the real kids to play out the scenarios of the film.

You know what? It was not real at all, and its innovations left the movie boring, and worse, pointless.

I am pretty open to new forms of story telling and innovation in films, but this just did not work for me. It is about a tough classroom in Paris, and acts like it is a documentary, but it isn't. All the situations are set up, and the people (not actors) improvise the scenarios. People acting like they are teachers and students, but not really actors.

Now the premise is that this is a tough school...well maybe in Paris it is, but here, it is not really so tough. And that the teacher gets into debates with students about things like his own sexuality, which the kids question, is absurd. He lets the kids totally control the classroom, and he seems to have no clue about how to enact any discipline or standards.

The film was a mess. As I said, boring and pointless. I would not recommend it to anyone.