The Class (Entre les Murs—"between the walls") is a 2008 film from France directed by Laurent Cantat.
It is a year in the life of, well, a class. François Marin is a French literature teacher in a school in one of the outer districts of Paris. His class is very ethnically mixed, consisting of immigrant children both documented and undocumented. Over the course of the year, François struggles to reach an unruly, insolent group of teens who hold him and his Mighty Whitey outlook in contempt.
The lead role is played by François Bégaudeau, in a story based on Bégaudeau's own semi-autobiographical novel, which was in turn based on his own experiences as a teacher.
This film includes examples of:
- Asian and Nerdy: Wei does particularly well at math and works hard to improve his weaker subjects. His parents are concerned that he is pushing himself too far.
- Berserk Button: Esmeralda remains a distant snarker for most of the class until Francois calls her a skank.
- Big Game: Averted. Unlike many films about education (especially in the US), there is no high-stakes test (Stand and Deliver), dance contest (Take the Lead), karate tournament (The Karate Kid), or other goal for the students to work toward under their teacher's wise guidance in order to overcome their humble origins and society's prejudices. Instead, it's just another school year.
- Cigarette of Anxiety: Francois has to retreat to the cafeteria to smoke after a nasty argument with the hellions that make up his class—and then the lunch lady tells him he has to put the cigarette out.
- Determinator: Francois is determined not only to educate his students, but to discover what gets his students to tick and from that want to learn more from their class.
- Downer Ending: A low-key one, but still. Francois fails to reach the problem student, who is expelled. He fails to reach the rude, insolent girl, who specifically says that while she did learn stuff during the year—in fact, she read Plato's Republic, of all things—she learned nothing in his class and the books he assigns are shit. None of the kids in Francois's class, in fact, mention his class as a place they learned anything, and one girl comes up to him after class is dismissed specifically to say she didn't learn anything at all that year.
- Education Mama: Inverted. Wei's parents are worried that he pushes himself too hard in his schoolwork.
- Exact Words: Francois tries to backpedal out of the fact that he lost his temper and called two of his students "skanks" by claiming he only said their actions made them look like skanks. Nobody cares.
- Eyes Out of Sight: The goth kid has bangs that completely obscure his eyes. How he avoids bumping into things is not explained.
- Goth: The goth kid, who specifically says he dresses goth because he is gloomy. He has the standard pale skin and dark clothing and combines it with bangs, gives a talk in front of the class where he defends his look as trying to be an individual and that if the class were 22 goth kids and one other, then the one "other" kid wouldn't be as quick to pick on the goths. Francois challenges him, asking how he is being an individual if he is adopting a standard look.
- Inner City School: A white schoolteacher tries to connect with and educate his lower-income, ethnically mixed students. He mostly fails.
- Intro Dump: The old and new teachers introduce themselves to each other and the audience at the start of term, in the second scene. Francois is last.
- Mighty Whitey: Averted (see also Save Our Students below).
- Mistaken for Gay: Francois finds out some of his students think he's gay. He takes it pretty calmly however, and just prods those who think so by asking them why they'd have a problem with it if he is. It's not enough to tame his students for good, but enough to shut the rumors up.
- One Drink Will Kill the Baby: The teacher who announces her pregnancy pops a bottle of champagne for the other teachers but says she will only have "a drop". Then averted when she in fact downs a whole glass.
- The Quiet One: Henriette, who only speaks up at the end of the film to say she didn't learn anything.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: Esmeralda and her friend Khoumba to an extent.
- Save Our Students: A deconstruction. For once, the white teacher isn't able to single-handly save his minority students and Souleymane is expelled.
- School Is for Losers: Kind of the attitude of Soulyemane and his friends in the beginning.
- Slice of Life: There is no real dramatic arc, although there is at least the theme of Francois trying to get through to his unruly students and mostly failing. It's simply a portrait of a year at a high school.
- World of Snark
