Will The Class graduate with honours at the Oscars?
Next weekend Laurent Cantet's film set in a Parisian school goes on release in the UK, and this Sunday the director will be in LA to see if has won the Academy Award for best foreign language film.
Scene from The Class. Photo copyright Georgi Lazarevski/Haut et Court Distribution
France has , winning on 12 occasions, a record beaten only by Italy with 13 awards. If we're going purely on past form Ari Folman might be feeling pessimistic about his chances of success as Israel has yet to win the foreign film Oscar; he's still the director I'd like to see walk away with an award.
The Class is an entertaining and thoughtful look at the relationships within the walls of a school, focussing on a group of students around the age of 15 and the teachers who work with them. Although the film feels like a documentary, and is based on an autobiographical book by - who also plays the role of the central character Monsieur Marin - it is a fiction. None of the actors were professionals and were cast from within a single school while the script developed in workshops. As with most of Laurent Cantet's films power is one of the central themes: from the students' struggles to assert themselves in class and win respect from their peers to the teachers' sometimes unsteady attempts to keep the balance between order and healthy debate.
What is most striking about the film is Cantet's refusal to take sides. Nobody is idealised or demonised and the result is a film that is frequently provocative (certainly among teachers at the screening I attended) but doesn't feel like it is led by issues. We interviewed Laurent Cantet earlier in the week and will have the item on our website at the beginning of next week - by which time he might well be an Oscar winner.
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