With a lot to write about, I'm going to break my tradition and write about the newest one first. This afternoon Jack (a teacher of English here in America) and I really enjoyed this movie about François Marin, a teacher of French in Paris. Not really a documentary and not really a drama, it was adapted by François Bégaudeau, Robin Campillo, and Laurent Cantet from Bégaudeau's novel Entre les Murs, which literally translates to Between the Walls. Every minute takes place between the walls, if you include the courtyard, of the inner city school, especially Marin's (Bégaudeau) racially mixed classroom of 13-15 year olds. Bégaudeau and director Cantet, using the novel as a springboard, invited students and teachers from a school in the 20th Arrondisement (a poor neighborhood, though one travel website said it is becoming "yuppified") to work out relationships and plot points, and then act in the movie (many of them used their own first names for their characters). I know a little French, and I know that occasionally the subtitlers used their imagination: in one scene a student is at the blackboard attempting to conjugate the verb croire (to believe). The subtitlers decided the best way to show her mistakes was to make us think the verb was to swim (nager) and have the other kids read, "swammed?" "swummed?" Petty, yes; necessary, maybe; and clearly not the fault of Bégaudeau and Cantet, who won, among others, a unanimous vote for The Palme D'Or at Cannes (the highest prize, which hadn't gone to a French film for 21 years), the Independent Spirit Award for Best Foreign Film, and the César (French Oscar) for Best Writing - Adaptation.
Entre les Murs (I like the French title better) may be the first film set in Paris that does not feature a shot of the Eiffel Tower (which is in the 7th Arrondisement), the exception that proves the #2 rule for movies.
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