The idea of French filmmaking still brings to mind images of fiercely middle-class adults loitering in cafes, musing on life, frequently philandering and always talking, talking, talking.
There is certainly plenty of talking in filmmaker Laurent Cantet's "The Class," winner of the prestigious Palm d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival and France's submission to the Academy Awards for the best foreign language Oscar. Rather than slickly bourgeois adults, however, the action focuses quite specifically on the classroom interactions between a high school teacher and his unruly, multicultural roster of young charges, presenting the face of the future of France.
In focusing on a single class, filled with kids from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, captured with a documentary immediacy, the film finds a snapping, pinging rhythm to present the classroom sequences, a seesaw balance between creative chaos and genuine disorder. Perhaps never before has a film been able to wring such drama from diagraming sentences and discussing the fine points of proper verb tenses.
Cantet -- who explored the societal microcosms of the family, in "Time Out" (2001), and the factory, in "Human Resources" (1999) -- found the catalyst for "The Class" while promoting his previous film, 2005's "Heading South."
He appeared on a radio show, and one of the other guests was Francois Begaudeau, promoting "Entre les Murs," his book on his years as a high school teacher.
After the broadcast, Cantet explained he was working on a film script along similar lines, and Begaudeau told him to read the book and get back to him.
"I read the book that night," Cantet said recently in Los Angeles, "and was really torn between loving every sentence -- the energy, the funny dialogues he wrote -- and at the same time I had anxiety because I realized the point of view he had was something I would never have by myself."
"So we met and I proposed not to make a real adapta- tion of the book, I proposed to make an extension of the book, using the way the book had been done to give flesh to the film, the documentary spirit of it."
Cantet and his usual co-writer, Robin Capillo (who also edits Cantet's films), worked on a script that followed Cantet's original idea -- played out in the film as the story line of a troubled student named Souleymane -- all the while seeking advice and guidance from Begaudeau.
And as it turns out, Begaudeau was the perfect choice to play the teacher.
