The Class review

With its fundamentalist zeal for the secular purity of the Republic, France is a particularly fascinating encapsulation of issues of identity and race. Its protectionism with regard to resisting foreign cultural imports can be seen as having overtly political overtones; the actions of a country struggling with its modern identity. In this context, language and image become the battleground for exclusion and assimilation – revealing the power plays inherent in received modes of behaviour and expression.

France is the home of semantics – the study of the power of words – and there is surely no coincidence that a country which places such importance on high art should also produce philosophers obsessed with the repressive qualities of language. Ironically, such theorists of language could rarely write clearly so tutors of semantics the world over would do well to screen The Class.

Playing himself in Laurent Cantet’s adaptation of his autobiography, François Bégaudeau is a young French teacher in an inner city comprehensive. Attempting to assert authority over his unruly class he insists on unfaltering attention and respect while informally engaging with the students as individuals. In this way he allows his students to lead the discussion into areas of relevance to their lives and into questions of identity and significance. But when François lets this finely balanced informality verge on insult, his fragile authority is undermined, jeopardising his job.

Despite a relative lack of narrative, The Class is mesmerising for the simple pleasure of witnessing the students arguing their way, with unaffected incisiveness, through the things that matter to them – from music and football to race and language. Ultimately, the film stresses that the meaning of words is of far more than academic importance.

Shot with an unprofessional cast who were given freedom to improvise, the film has an accentuated sense of realism – that this is a fleeting glimpse into a rarely examined world. Despite its honest portrayal of teachers as overworked, underpaid and underappreciated, you even leave the cinema wanting to teach.