Review of The Class (2008) by Mario J — 01 Mar 2009

I'm torn between 3.5 and 4 for this movie. It's a very interesting portrait of a french society in a classroom. It's directed in a blunt and easy way, so it makes it easy to swallow, or in simpler terms - you will not get bored. :) The characters/students are very distinctive and quirky so they make a beautiful cast that holds the whole movie together. There is even a small and very grasping narrative plot in the second half of this mainly documentaristic movie.

I did not like being confused by the mostly irrational behaviour of the teacher in the second half of the movie, a weak and resolveless ending (it is though hard to end these kinds of movies), and a bit of pretentiousness of this movie, even though my classroom in Serbia looks more or less the same (the difference is that we don't have a lot of racist tensions in a classroom, however I did not feel that was the real tag of this movie, and maybe it should have been). And it is a bit too long.