The literal interpretation of Laurent Cantet’s Entre les Murs, which walked away with the coveted Palme d’Or at Cannes last year, is ‘between the walls’, perhaps a better articulation of the possibilities and problems presented by the modern school classroom.
Based upon François Bégaudeau’s semi-autobiographical account of his own experiences as a teacher in a tough Parisian inner city school, it features the writer playing himself, with both his passion and authenticity shining through in a film which pulls few punches in its representation of the social, political, economic and intellectual issues which occur in these very particular spaces.
Bégaudeau plays Mr Marin, a keen and pragmatic teacher, who is careful to consider when and where the rules of the institution are best enforced in order to maintain some semblance of order, or where leniency will provide the pedagogic rewards. The arrival of a particularly difficult class, whose students are separated by great rifts in their backgrounds and languages, challenges his ability to tease responses from his more difficult charges, with his own ill-judged outburst of anger leading to a confrontation with two students. The closing scene, of apathy, indifference and hopelessness, asks far more questions than it could ever hope to answer – some distance from the tidy middle-class hopefulness of Dangerous Minds and its ilk. This two-disc set includes the usual interviews, together with footage of rehearsals of the kids of Class 4/3.
Kingsley Marshall is an academic and journalist who lectures in film and contributes music and film criticism, features and reviews to Little White Lies, Shook and Big Screen magazines in the UK. He was appointed Technical Editor at Clash magazine in 2010, where he writes a technology and games column.