Making the grade

Laurent Cantet on The Class, his brilliant
docu-like take on multiculturalism and
the school system in France

TEACHER FEATURE: The Class

by MATTHEW HAYS

French filmmaker Laurent Cantet is understandably pleased about the overwhelming response his latest film is receiving. When The Class debuted at Cannes last year, it got standing ovations, and then, the Sean Penn-led jury unanimously awarded the feature the Palme d’Or. When a Cannes jury unanimously agrees on anything, it’s the stuff of headlines.

Now the film has ignited with international audiences as well as on its home turf—where young audiences have taken to The Class’s astute representation of teenage students. “This has been very surprising to me,” Cantet says, in Montreal to promote the film. “Most people that age usually go to see action movies. But here they are, really connecting to it.”

The Class is not a documentary, but it sure feels like one. Cantet recalls that, a few years ago, he had written a script about an immigrant student struggling to make school work out in Paris. Then he read a book by François Bégaudeau, a teacher with 10 years of experience teaching in a multicultural Parisian school. “I read the book and found myself laughing at many of the sentences,” Cantet says. “There’s a lot of humour in how each of the students speak. I was also saddened by the book, because many of the issues it raises are not resolved.”

Cantet met with Bégaudeau and they decided to collaborate. “He had been a teacher for a long while and I could tell he knew precisely what could happen in a classroom.” They then went to another inner-city school and met with students, improvised various scenarios and then wrote a script around their experiences. The result is a nuanced, complex film, in which Bégaudeau (amazingly, in his acting debut) tries to reach the students, who are often rebellious and not open to his lectures about language.

Class warfare

The subtext, of course, is barely beneath the surface: Bégaudeau is but one of several white teachers, all valiantly struggling to do their jobs, while a group of largely non-white students who don’t feel welcome in France find themselves at odds. For every lesson Bégaudeau attempts to give, there are questions from the often-unruly crowd: why should we learn proper French when no one actually speaks that way anymore? Why are you always using names like Bill, rather than Ahmed? At one point, one of the students asks Bégaudeau if he likes men—assuming that his erudite manner must equal homosexuality.

Our sympathies are made to constantly shift, and Bégaudeau manoeuvres his way through a gruelling relay race, attempting to respect differences while also challenging the students to do their best. “During our writing process we had extensive workshops with the students. We tested various situations and listened to what they said and then took some of those aspects and put them in the script. I got to know them well and we created characters around what they gave me. I tried not to talk to them too much, but rather tried to listen to each of them.”

Though not a documentary, Cantet ended up with a shooting ratio like that of a cinema verité film; 150 hours of rushes had to be sculpted into a two-hour running time. “The editing process took four and a half months,” Cantet reports.

Cantet says that The Class appears to be touching a nerve wherever it screens. “The issues are similar in countries around the world.” Which effectively confirms the old adage about being universal by focusing on the specific: The Class is shot almost entirely in one room. But while much of the experience of witnessing Bégaudeau parry with his pupils is harrowing, Cantet insists this is an optimistic film.

“I wanted to show that this diversity can be a richness, not just a problem. These kids are facing things that are so far away from their own experience. I think this will give them an outlook that will make them better people. When I was 13, all the kids in my school were the same: white and middle-class. What my kids are experiencing now, in a school much like the one in the film, they are getting a far richer education.

“A lot of the problems we’re facing right now are because of the stigmatization of this group of students. If you want these students to become part of society, you have to prove to the children that the society desires them. One character says she’s not proud to be French. Well of course she’s not proud to be French if France is not proud to have her. If you listen to what these kids have to say, perhaps we can avoid situations like the riots we had in Paris a couple of years ago.”

THE CLASS OPENS FRIDAY, JAN. 23