Popnography
CONTACTAbout UsCAREER OPPORTUNITIESADVERTISE WITH USPRIVACY POLICYPRIVACY PREFERENCESTERMS OF USELEGAL NOTICE
© 2025 Pride Publishing Inc.
All Rights reserved
All Rights reserved
Scroll To Top
By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Perhaps the 2009 Oscars race has made me a cynical, bitter gay with little appetite for Hollywood or any of its maudlin, year-end offerings. OK -- Slumdog and Milk and Doubt and The Wrestler the rest were awesome. But now it's time for us to start weaning ourselves off the melodramatic, inspirational flicks that, for the past two months, have all but canceled each other out.
So I was a bit hesitant going to see The Class, this year's Golden Palm-winning film about an inner city middle school literature teacher in Paris. Thankfully, though, director Laurent Cantet's effort is as thought provoking as it is subtle -- which makes The Class a perfect Oscars hangover tonic.
Francois Begaudeau -- the actual teacher (and a looker) who wrote the novel on which the film is based -- plays a semi-autobiographical version of himself as Mr. Marin. Walking a fine, and evidently dangerous, line between colloquial and formal teaching styles, Marin is spotlighted in his oft-futile attempts at student enlightenment and his frequent clashes with a class of middle-schoolers at the utmost threshold of rambunctiousness and recalcitrance. The result is a film complex in the most surprising and striking ways.
What makes The Class particularly engaging is its direct opposition to the cliches of other inner city teacher movies. Instead of relying on wrought narratives (and musical gimmicks), most of the film is shot strictly within the confines of a classroom setting, where students' back-stories and personalities are doled out gradually. The scenes of Mr. Marin teaching his students tend to last forever, yet are remarkably carried by punchy, back-and-forth dialogue and an impending sense of chaos and disaster.
Compositionally, The Class is quite spare in some respects, almost bordering on documentary. But for a crowd that has been sitting through a long set of Hollywood tearjerkers for the past two months, less is probably more.
-- MIKE BERLIN
Previously > Don't be Taken in
Watch Now: Pride Today
Latest Stories
Who was Lizzie Borden? Meet the 'Monster' season 4 subject
July 08 2025 7:11 PM
GALECA announces 2025 Dorian TV Award winners—here's the full list
July 08 2025 3:42 PM
San Francisco queen Hilary Rivers detained by ICE after asylum hearing
July 08 2025 2:22 PM
Billie Jean King: Listen to transgender athletes
July 08 2025 11:56 AM
California defies Trump, won't ban trans athletes from school sports
July 07 2025 8:18 PM
'Drag Race': Snatch Game winners and the celebs they impersonated
July 07 2025 6:21 PM
The Old Guard's Charlize Theron and cast on centuries-old same-sex love stories
July 07 2025 4:21 PM