The Teacher

François Foucault teaches literature at a selective lycée in Paris. When something he says at a conference is taken the wrong way he finds himself sent for a year to a school in the suburbs. The class does not listen, his methods do not work, and in the first weeks he fails completely. Then something forms between him and one student, Seydou. Olivier Ayache-Vidal directs. Denis Podalydès plays Foucault. The preparation was unusual. Before writing the screenplay Ayache-Vidal spent two years in a school in Seine-Saint-Denis, sitting in on lessons, in the staff room, taking notes. Most of the students in the film are not professional actors but pupils from that school. That preparation shows in the narrative. The classroom scenes leave the template; the students are not suddenly inspired into transformation, and what the teacher wins is not the class but a few people. The danger is the genre. The well meaning teacher arriving at a difficult class has been made many times, and the film falls into that shape in places, particularly at the end. The subject is educational inequality in France: which schools get which teachers, how the examination system works, and how suburban schools are marked. Who it is for: viewers who like French school films and drama about education. Who it is not for: the template is familiar and the ending is too optimistic, and the students' point of view is not given enough room.