Entre les Murs (The Class)

I went to see this film awhile back.
I'd first heard about this first when I was doing my research for TIFF08. I was seeing what movies had done the other big festivals around the world and obviously Entre les Murs (which goes by The Class in English contexts) caught my eye as the Palme d'Or winner at Cannes and for it subject matter. The trailer looked amazing. Needless to say, I was disappointed when I found out that it wasn't coming to Toronto.
Anyway, it did come to the city a little while later and with extremely high expectations, I went to see it.
I was disappointed. First of all, I have to say that my expectations were REALLY high. I think the biggest problem was that the film was very different from the trailer and this is the movie had been a flushed out version of the trailer, I would have been happy.
Instead, what I found was that the film scratched the surface of many issues that arise in an inner city school (perhaps this would have been more shocking/interesting to people who aren't in the education field) but few of the stories went as in-depth as I would have liked.
The film was very much like a documentary, and that was fine, but the timeline seemed off kilter. It seemed like the film was going to span one academic year and it did, but the end was very abrupt and for a film that seemed to be marketed as the journey of an educator to win over his students, it seemed to leave out the part about how he did it. There was one section which showed him reaching out to a troubled student and the teaching strategies he used to do so, but it was such a small part of the film that I expected there to be more.
I liked the characters in the film. They were real and raw and they were living it, but it's just that story that wasn't pieced together quite right. I'm sure they had tons more footage, so maybe they just made some wrong choices in which bits to put into the production.
I think they did a good job of highlighting different stories and their backgrounds. Of course it's an added bonus that, for the most part, are real students who are basically being themselves, put in various situations and are not trained actors/actresses. That being said, perhaps they lost the chance to follow the overarching story (or at least what I thought it should be) by focusing on individual stories. Maybe I just wanted a film that needed 5 hours to be told.
Most of the issues that were raised about life at an inner school and the outskirts of Paris didn't surprise me. The one thing that did surprise me was that two student representatives were present at staff meetings where marks are discussed. I don't know from which grade this practice happens and perhaps in other situation or with other students it would be fine, but I just thought that it would open a huge can of worms by having students present at these meetings. Not to say that I think that teachers should always be doing things behind closed doors, I get that part of it, but I just don't know if students are mature enough to handle the confidentiality of the situation and the delicateness of some of the issues that are raised in these meetings. I do agree that it's nice to have a student's opinion at times and although some teachers are very close to students and know their backgrounds and special situations, often their peers have better insight into some of the difficulties that their classmates are going through. Still - it's really tricky and I'm a little torn about whether or not I agree with the practice.
As the final clip of the film started, I knew that it was the end. The credits started and I was left with the feeling of - that's it? I wanted more from the film. I think the thing was, as I watched the film, I enjoyed the issues, the banter, the characters, the stories...and then it jumped to the end and it was over.
I don't know. I guess I would recommend this film to others. I almost want to watch the film again, because I can't believe that I didn't have as strong a positive reaction as all of the critics have had. Makes me wonder if I missed something.

- picture courtesy of www.sonyclassics.com