A Teacher

A Teacher (2013)

A maddening movie that has some gutsy aspects. But there is so much depending on credibility in the character's motivations, you can't quite ever buy the plot.

Which is this: a high school teacher gets involved with one of her students. I know this happens now and then, often to national headlines, so that much I like. But we want to see the psychology of a teacher who would do that, and it isn't here. What the director and writer (and leading actress, to some extent) give us is a young woman who takes risks and is obsessed with the young man she begins having sex with. Big risks. Risks so absurd (like kissing him in the classroom after the other students have left) that you wonder if the movie makers had information that this was true, or if they were winging it with no good instincts about how people would act in this situation.

Not that it needs to be terribly rational. Obviously here is a case of a teacher losing track of her place in her job, in her life, and of the consequences ahead. The student we believe, just enjoying a good ride with a nutty teacher, somewhat sincere in his liking her but a little baffled by her obsession. I mean he's only a high schooler, and as much as they know a lot about a lot, they don't know about the convolutions of older people's ability to love, and the complications of that.

Anyway, there is a lot offered here and very little achieved. To some extent the last scene of the teacher lying on a borrowed bed sums up all of our feelings. Kind of, oh my god, oh my god. Yeah, of course. But with so much dangling and unexplored, this could have been a powerful, valuable, must see drama.

What it does better is capture the joylessness of abuse. I liked that Diana's homelife was a share house rather than a marriage gone stale (as in the series). Also less glamourised.

We don't get to know the characters in this film. Hannah Fidell gives us no back story and no resolution. If you feel as nervous about the epidemic of teacher-student sexual abuse as I do, "A Teacher" won't leave you feeling any better.

"A Teacher" is not the cheap outrage movie I thought it might be. It is not full of raunchy sex. There is no violence to. The director attempted a psychological treatment of the perpetrator. She succeeds, but she doesn't surprise me.

Lindsay Burdge plays Diana Watts, a 30-ish high school English teacher with a lost lamb demeanor and a family crisis she is trying to avoid. Diana is not the Pam Smart sultry seductress with wicked intentions. She girl-next-door attractive, but she is depressed. I empathized. I wanted to help her find her way.

Diana has roommates and friends who ask her out to parties where she has the opportunity to meet guys, but she's so insecure she cannot really connect with her peers. Diana's ex-husband and her brother try to get her attention about issues in the family, but Diana is too confused deal with them.

How did a nice girl like Diana end up with that creep? Hidell leaves it up to us to guess.

Will Brittain plays Eric Tull, a hot high school jock from a rich family. Eric is the dominant one in the relationship. Eric decides he is going to take Diana to his father's ranch. Eric decides when they are going to have sex.

The sex depicted is not explicit, but Hidell makes it plain it is joyless for Diana. Eric is a bonehead. He doesn't read when Diana is feeling sad an anxious. He doesn't care. Eric's job is stud service. He could get any girl in school he wanted. It seems he thinks Diana should be grateful to HIM for a quickie in the parking lot!

Eric comes across as a bit old for high school. This often happens when directors cast 25-year-old hunks to play high school students. However, Hidell does a deft job in show us how Eric is not quite a man yet. Diana isn't able to convey to Eric the high risk of their relationship. Eric is not able to see the situation as an adult and exercise good judgment. He's just an over privileged Texas boy playing with daddy's toys and diddling his English teacher.

I wanted to see something bad happen to Eric. I wanted to see something good happen to Diana. I wanted a comforting answer as to why so many pretty, young teachers have sex with their students. However, Hidell does't just come out and give me what I want.

Apart from awkward camera work and the stop-and-go jumpiness from one seen to the next, Hidell does a good job with what she has. She doesn't try to emulate the Hollywood blockbusters. She doesn't make her actors punch above their weight, which steers the film away from b-movie movie ham.

I felt voyeuristic. It might have been me and my camera following Diana around. The absence of backstory or subplots gave me an undiluted taste of a perilous episode in Diana Watts' life.

The drawback of Hidell's cinema vérité is I found no redemption for Eric. I just hated him. However, Eric is the victim. Not Diana. Diana is the adult. Diana is the one breaking her contract, lying to her employers, and eroding society's trust. Yet, Hidell is telling me I must empathize with Diana, and I do. Perhaps Hidell is saving the tears of Eric for "A Teacher II."

I usually really don't care much about the soundtrack in a movie, but in this one I noticed how bad it is. It was like from a horror movie. I usually like slow movies and movies with only 2 characters, but this one was just pointless. The story was going nowhere, we didn't learn anything about the characters, their motives, and so on. There was also not much chemistry between the main characters, which for me is probably the most important part in a romantic movie. What's up with that family scene? It lead us nowhere. What's up with all those unnecessary running scenes? They are just a filler. How about some dialogue or a plot? Character development? Anything? If you want to see a good romantic movie with low budged, but that is emotional and interesting, go watch "Blue Jay" and skip this one.

This is a film in A Teacher that is nudging itself, trying to be set free from the restraints and the shortcomings of the finished product. The film trying to break free is a deep, involved character study on a teacher-student relationship that functions because of deep conversation and a mutual understanding between parties. The film we get is an interesting albeit mostly flat examination of an unremarkable teacher-student affair that strides along with sporadic hardships and ends in predictable calamity.

Hannah Fidell wanders into mumblecore territory here, as she directors and pens the film about Diana Watts (Lindsay Burdge), a high school English teacher, in her thirties or so, who has been flirting and hanging around with student Eric Tull (Will Brittain). The two hang out frequently - mostly in each others homes so being spotted in public isn't possible - and both enjoy each others company, personality, and intimacy. It doesn't take long, however, for Diana's paranoia to nearly get the best of her, as she tries to keep their relationship closeted, even as Eric begins to turn the other cheek to her at some points.

Immediately, this is a story that needs to be told, and this film ostensibly will humanize and maybe justify a teacher-student relationship. However, Fidell unfortunately keeps things too heavily nuanced to be insightful and too subtle to evoke much commentary or humanity. There isn't much to Diana or Eric, and their relationship seems more existent because it's a taboo and it's not normative. There's no real indicator on why they're together in the first place. We don't see why Eric has captured her eye, as he is just a typical, faceless high school teenager that comes to class everyday, does his work, and is quietly anxious sexually. There's no justification as to why Diana would want to date a student, or Eric in particular, seeing as if someone found out it could irreparably scar her reputation and put her out of a job.

The film I was hoping A Tacher would be featured extensive dialog to develop each character, dialog in the way of both of them talking about why they like each other enough to carry out a dangerous relationship under the noses of classmates and the school administration, and had deeply intimate, satisfying sex. This would be a four star film. The film we have here is one with minimal dialog in the way of characters, a shallow, limited view on why these two would want to be together, and relatively simple sex scenes captured by a grim camera that knows no color scheme other than black or very, very gray.

Having said all this, the film does in fact feature a strong lead performance by Lindsay Burdge, whose teacher character is made a sympathetic character, even with out much develop towards her. We can see that she thinks something of this relationship - whatever that may be - and she would be pained deeply if something wrong were to happen with it. If the film didn't have Burdge at the center, at least trying to provide some sort of clarity the character's motivations in this relationship, this would've been a complete misfire.

A Teacher is a serviceable, but overly-simple look at a subject that needs strong care and attention to be made human. The characters should've been more identifiable, the sex should've been more powerful and shocking considering the age gap, and the drama should've been thicker. The only thing I thought A Teacher was doing, by the end of it, was simply trying to push transgressive boundaries for the sake of doing so; not because it had something genuinely enlightening or strong to say.

Starring: Lindsay Burdge and Will Brittain. Directed by: Hannah Fidell.