Los Angeles Journal


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2008-12-18

by John Esther

Interview: Laurent Cantet

Summary

Interview with French Oscar pick director

Article

France’s official Oscar entry for best foreign film and winner of the Palme D’Or at Cannes International Film Festival 2008, The Class (Entre Les Murs) is the prime result of collaboration between co-writer and director Laurent Cantet, co-writers François Bégaudeau and Robin Campillo, plus a host of splendid third and fourth level students at the François Dolto Junior High -- located in Paris’ 20th arrondissement.

Based on Bégaudeau's novel, Entre les murs, and commencing with workshops in November 2006, the film version of The Class became a chronicle of François (Bégaudeau), a French teacher struggling with an array of smart, stupid, sassy, simple and sympathetic students throughout the school year.

Like in every other class at the school, these adolescents will contest their teachers toward their authorial demarcations. Undeterred to make a difference, in Socratic fashion François challenges these students to understand the power of language and erudition. Fortunately and unfortunately, he has the power of language superiority. The language skills he attempts to instill in the class may bode well for those students wishing to escape their working class milieu, but with a little knowledge comes any annoying sense of power. The more François teaches these adolescents to talk, the more they learn to talk back.

As the year incrementally concludes, so does the intensity, intelligence and innovation in the interchanges between teacher and students. Most of the time, François maintains his composure in the visage of delusional ignorance, mistrust and defiance. Yet there are some moments where he relinquishes his logomachy superiority with a careless lexical choice. Speak about quibbling over semantics.

A grade-B+/A- effort, Cantet’s fifth feature and the follow-up to his 2005 film, Heading South (Vers Le Sud), The Class should make the five-film Oscar cut (along with Israel’s Waltz with Bashir and Italy’s Gomorrah).

In this exclusive interview, we spoke to Cantet about The Class, class and culture.

Los Angeles Journal: Why did you want to make this film?
Laurent Cantet: It’s cool, that special moment of school. It’s a moment where a lot of what we all became was decided and especially the image we have of our place in society. It’s a moment where you begin to think of yourself as part of a community, as part of a society, as a citizen. It was interesting to look at that moment. In France we have a very long and very old discussion about school: What school should be; what school is; what school is not. There is a lot of ideology in the discussion. I just wanted to say, “No, stop ideology and look what can happen between 25 people in a class.” After that everyone can make the conclusion or ask all the questions he or she wants. The film is showing a lot of reality and that’s all.

JE: Which of the kids do you think you were most like when you were his or her age?
LC: I was a very quiet kid and perhaps not enough opposed to the model the adults gave me and asked me to conform. In fact school was very important to me. I was very happy at school. I learned a lot of things. I really met so many people in school.

JE: What do you have in common with François?
LC: The sort of open mind about the issues of society. I have quite a lot of sympathy for the way he’s dealing with the children, the way he’s trying to make them think, going a little bit further in their thinking process and his respect for them. Even if he sometimes is very sarcastic, even if he’s pushing them any time, it’s a way to prove to them that they are real and to take themselves seriously.

LAJ: His class consciousness can aid and hinder his teaching capabilities.
LC: The scene I really like is at the end when we have this girl saying she didn’t understand or learn anything during the school year. In the book François finished the scene by asking himself, “Does she know she’s already socially condemned?” That’s what François really feels about these kids. That’s why he has the strong relationships with the problematic children and not the good students.

LAJ: What similarities can we draw between teach-student relationships and filmmaker-audience relationships?
LC: The relationship is more between a teacher and an actor or even a director. François, in the film, was acting and, at the same time, sort of directing the scene. He was driving the kids towards what I was expecting. He’s trying to make the children formulate the thing they have to understand and learn. The parallel is more on that side. I don’t think I am teaching anything to the audience. I may ask questions to the audience, but these are questions I am asking myself, too. I don’t have answers. I just try to give some pointers and that’s all.

LAJ:There are a lot of cultures in the classroom. How representative is that of a contemporary classroom in France?
LC: It represents quite well some parts of the cities. The way The Class was formed is quite interesting. We opened this workshop we made in the school to all of the volunteers. The 25 who are in the film are the 25 who stayed in the workshop the whole school year. So we didn’t choose one Chinese, two Arabs; it was made naturally. It’s representative of this school and a lot of schools in Paris.

LAJ: Something that is barely, if at all, recognized in the film is that the teachers are much more homogeneous in their cultures and “race” than the students are –
LC: Yes, that’s something that is quite strange. The teachers are all white. In France we have a lot of white French teachers and very few black ones, for example. Maybe it will change now because the psyche is a little bit more diverse than it was a few years ago. France has a problem. In general, France has a very high image of itself, of its culture. I hope we are going to change that soon because we have more and more people arriving from everywhere. We have to accept that the culture is not homogeneous and that it’s not all set and done and that it’s always evolving with the people who are living there.

LAJ: I imagine that is very problematic and very confusing, perhaps repressive, that at this turning point there are white teachers instructing multicultural students, who are in turn taught to “obey white people.”
LC: [Laughs]. Of course. A lot of teachers are quite intelligent and can deal with that and don’t stigmatize the children. But yes, nevertheless you have a strict program where you have to learn that and that and that and not this.

LAJ:Another connection made toward the end of the film when the kid tries to discuss human reproduction is that a school year lasts nine months. In a way it is like a birth for everyone, which you alluded to during the first question of this interview.
LC: [Laughs]. Yes, why not? I think the kid was more interested by the sexual question, but you are right -- although I did not think that.

LAJ: The kids do not argue over political or historical figures but over who is the best soccer player in the world. Why do professional sports have such a strong hold on working class children?
LC: When I was 13 I must admit I was more interested in soccer than politics. But through the soccer questions in the film they’re dealing with a nationalist question. When you don’t feel accepted by the society which you are arriving, you are claiming your culture or country, which is not yours because maybe some of the players are not originally from that country. The harder it is to get integrated the more you hold onto the other culture. The nationalism is part of that.

LAJ: The film also deals with the power of language. How does language work to control kids in these environments where you are teaching them grammar like imperfect subjunctive?
LC: They will never use it. I don’t think I ever used it. I wanted to show through this scene that language in France is a very strong social marker. If you don’t know the codes you will be condemned to stay where your language obliges you to stay. School has a very strong mission to give all the tools it can to confront the psyche and give as much opportunity.

LAJ: Do you see any conflict between higher power structures then even teachers where teachers want to give children these opportunities, but higher structures, realizing that language sets social demarcations, implement policies or reduce funds for French language programs?
LC: One of the roles of school, which is difficult to accept by a lot of people, especially teachers who love the job they are doing, is that school is also a place where you sort the people. Some will go to the university and become managers. But we need those vocational workers, too. Society found in school the way to sort all the components it needs to function and that’s terrible. And that’s what Françoise tried to avoid without always managing it.

The Class opens tomorrow for its Oscar-qualifying run. For more information log onto http://www.landmarktheatres.com/Films/films_frameset.asp?id=70731