MOVIE REVIEW
The Class (2008)
Pierre Milon/Sony Pictures Classics
“Palme d’or” winner at the Cannes Film Festival and opener of the New York Film Festival, Laurent Cantet’s “The Class” is indeed powerful stuff. The film chronicles one year in a junior high school in an ethnically diverse arrondissement of Paris. François Bégaudeau, whose autobiographical book “Entre les murs” serves as the basis of the film, leads a cast of non-professional actors who play students and teachers. Here’s a real inspirational story without the kind of predictable “Dead Poets Society”-esque life-changing conclusion, about one French teacher attempting to instill something meaningful into a classroom full of overgrown infants who are rowdy, rebellious and combative. What most critics probably aren’t telling you about in their expectedly lavish praises of the film is its stereotypical and downright patronizing portrayal of race and ethnicity.