The Good Teacher

I took a post-work trip to the Palace cinema in Perth's Raine Square for this anxiety-inducing drama at the Alliance Française French Film Festival. There have been a few of these 'snowball' films of late, where one innocuous moment gets misunderstood and events spiral from it. 

In this case, a good-looking, young literature teacher, Julien (François Civil) is accused of trying to seduce a student in his class. It's clear she has misconstrued innocent looks and utterances, but the letter she writes to the deputy principal needs to be looked into. A chain of missteps begins.

This is based on events from the life of the director (and co-writer with Audrey Diwan), Teddy Lussi-Modeste. It seems something similar happened to him when he was teaching in a northern Paris school, and here he scratches open a few old wounds. Assuming the lead character's (and by association, the director's) innocence, the knock-on effects are dispiriting, to say the least, and fucking frightening to say the most.

The accuser, Leslie (Tosqane Duquesne) is clearly troubled, not malicious or nasty like some of the other students. This becomes explicable when her older brother, as head of the family, is informed. He's a violent, threatening nutter who says things like, "If you're lying, I'll kill you. And if he's lying, I'll kill him. Either way, I'm going to prison." Charmer.

Julien's school, and specifically his principal, are reluctant to support him, worrying about their reputation. The other teachers get behind him initially, but some begin to waver in the face of Julien's seeming intractability - his idea of setting boundaries is confiscating a football when he doesn't get an apology for a wayward kick hitting him, accident or not.

There's also the little 'problem' of him keeping his homosexuality private. Someone mentioned that if everyone had known, the accusation wouldn't have held any water, it would have helped his cause. The irony isn't lost on Julien.

The French title is Pas de Vagues, which means No Waves, presumably this is an unwritten edict in the French schooling system. A warning, even. An interesting angle is that there is zero onscreen input from parents, just teachers, students and one unhinged brother.

Civil gives us a fine performance, he's fast becoming one of the bright new things of French cinema, but everyone is believable, especially some of the students. It's a nervy, frustrating watch, but thoroughly watchable throughout, just falling short of the recent classic on a similar theme, The Teachers' Lounge.

The Good Teacher is showing at Palace and Luna cinemas (and others around Australia) for the French Film Festival.

See also:

Certainly, the brilliant The Teachers' Lounge (2023), directed by Ilker Çatak, but also the equally fine The Class (2008) directed by Laurent Cantet, and Thomas Vinterberg's The Hunt (2012).