The Class

This is not an 'inspirational teacher' movie, but it is a small, quiet inspiration.

But ultimately it's a fascinating, sometimes exhilarating movie that seems to make a genuine contact with the classroom, and shows us an educational system struggling, and managing, to survive.

Cantet's film lulls the spectator into the rhythms of the everyday reality of school, belying a very carefully coordinated narrative structure that only becomes apparent in its final act.

Most impressive, Cantet tracks the racial and ethnic resentments that simmer beneath the classroom discussions but become harder to quell when the parents get involved.

The film raises important questions about learning, authority and discipline, and is honest enough to admit that it doesn't really have any answers.

The two-hour-plus runtime... breezes past thanks to its sheer unrelenting energy.

Winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes 2008.

The film leaps through the school year in sudden blinks, with the opportunity for Beagaudeau to reach these kids becoming as ungraspable as melting snow.

Despite a noble desire to plumb the real racial, class, and generational politics of a contemporary classroom, The Class may strike some as unbearably prolonged, and at times, stagnant exercise.