Cannes-winning French film a "Class" act

Laurent Cantet takes a raw look at a school year through the eyes of a single teacher in "The Class," which won the coveted Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday.

The film -- whose French title "Entre les Murs" or "Between the Walls" accurately captures the self-imposed quarantine -- is based on a novel by Francois Begaudeau, written from his own experiences as a teacher. He also contributes to the screenplay and plays the key role of a language teacher, so we can be pretty certain the film stays true its subject.

While Begaudeau's teacher struggles to get his young charges to focus on French verbs, they question his use of "white" names in examples, and whether the required reading has any relevance to their lives.

Many students come from abroad; some have parents who are undocumented immigrants. They kid a lot, some of it good-natured but much of it comes closer to mockery. Their intolerance stems from attitudes about how other students look and behave, where they are from and how they speak.

As the year goes by, the students and Begaudeau's fellow teachers come into sharper focus. One student from Mali (played by Franck Keita) increasingly upsets the class with his attitude and anger. Like many, he isn't clear what school can offer him. He is sullen and retreats into rage, possibly to disguise his own fear of failure. Then the teacher himself makes a fateful miscalculation.

What works so well here is that none of the drama feels the least bit imposed. It evolves naturally from class assignments, the teacher's own free-form style and the distinctly individual personalities of these young people thrown together by chance. While it may lack the narrative drive of films from the past such as "Blackboard Jungle," it also contains nothing contrived or gimmicky. This is probably one of the most realistic high school movies ever made.