Monsieur Lazhar

Overview

We've all had teachers who changed our lives. We just haven't, generally, alighted onto tables to declare them "O Captain, my Captain". These larger-than-life 'movie teachers' are entertaining, sure, but they're not real enough to punch you in that soft spot in the gut a more quietly familiar representation, of a person more imperfect than ideal, can target. What if your teacher smacks you across the back of the head, makes you take dictation from Balzac, and forgets to paste up anything colourful on the wall? What if your teacher isn't perfect; what if he's just the perfect teacher for right now?

Monsieur Lazhar is the sensitively drawn antidote to all those inspiring teacher movies (Ryan Gosling's Half Nelson also admirably bucked the trend). It starts when a primary school one morning discovers a teacher, Martine, has hanged herself in her classroom. Particularly disturbed by the tragedy are her students Simon (Emilien Neron) and Alice (Sophie Nelisse), who saw her body. But the classroom is repainted, counselling dispensed, and everyone encouraged to return to living while the principal hastily brings in a new teacher, Bachir Lazhar (Mohamed Fellag).

They're all still traumatised — as is he, though they don't know it. He's a recent arrival from Algeria with a tragic history he'd rather not talk about. He calmly, though with means not always conventional to contemporary French Canadians, tries to give his 11- and 12-year-old charges the education they need while discreetly awaiting a ruling on his application for asylum.

It should be heavy, but it's not. Monsieur Lazhar has a light touch that led it to win the Audience Award at this year's Sydney Film Festival. Basically, it's the saddest crowd-pleaser you'll ever see. The slice of life it presents touches on issues from grief and pedagogy to refugees and exile, and it touches on them tenderly, without oversentimentality. The cherry on top is that Nelisse's Sophie is the most adorable of teachers' pets and singly responsible for a wave of cluckiness about to overtake Australian cinemagoers.