Le Maître d'école

Why did I decided to pick this one up at my local library? There's so many good movie out there, why settle for a mediocre one? I don't no how to answer that question. In the case of "Le Maître d'école", maybe it's because my wife is a teacher herself.

This is not a movie that you'll fondly remember in a few years times. In fact, you'll probably have forgotten most of it. But still, it's OK to watch, it's enjoyable. Coluche is good as the teacher. The kids are not too over the top. It's an honest comedy, with a certain commentary on the teaching job. But while some scenes are too long or superficial, others are not enough developed.

Seen at home, in Toronto, on March 17th, 2006.

73/100 (**½)

Being a teacher is an extremely serious business in current day France. Most teachers are doing tough jobs as they are constrained to work in crowded schools where violence and insults are regular features. There is also the problem of job satisfaction as the salaries offered are not very high. However, despite all the shortcoming mentioned above teaching profession continues to remain a noble profession in France and elsewhere as good teachers can always make a difference in the lives of students. The true king of French comedy actor Coluche as Gérard Barbier is one such good teacher. It is with great sensibility and tenderness that he plays the role of an educator who really makes efforts to understand the world of children. Although 'Le Maître De l'Ecole' is a comedy film with some memorable performances by school children who crack various hilarious jokes with their teacher, there are also times when it takes the form of a serious film. This gives viewers new ideas about the difficult lives of teachers at an educational institution for children. For this purpose, director Claude Berri extracted good performances from actors Josiane Balasko and Roland Giraud. Watching this film with children would be a great experience for parents as well as teachers as it depicts how one has to behave like children in order to understand their world.

As usual, a Coluche movie is for me a guaranteed fun moment as it happens in the 80s thus the best period in France and also because Coluche was such a gifted and role model actor! Here this one ranks among his best for two reasons: 1) Coluche has the best opportunity to show his really big heart: as a school teacher, he listens to his pupils, he is full of compassion for them; he helps everyone: his boss, his colleagues,… When you know that he was the single one rich artist to put his money and time to help the poor, you understand easily watching this movie where he draws such love and energy and why he miss us so much as there is not a single french celebrity who follows his path!!! 2) This movie is a condensed vision of what France was in the 80s: a cool place, with open debates, a old school administration with values, families working and kids respectful. Now all this balance has been exploded and being a teacher now is like being a soldier! I really like the idea that was supported in the movie that kids must be taught how to think by themselves! Now this fundamental principle of free citizens have been totally erased! However as this school happened as the same time as mine, this surely explains why this movie can reverb on me like that because I'm just one of this thousand kids who have been enlightened like this!

In Claude Berri's "The School Master", Coluche plays Gérard Barbier, a substitute teacher in a public school in some French little town whose name doesn't really matter. And it's not every day that a film's main character shares the same job than I and so maybe behind its façade of unpretentious little comedy, that film touched me a little more deeply than it was supposed to. I'm surprised how much I liked it given how remarkably unexecptional it is.

And I mean that as a compliment.

Coluche was a huge star in the late 70s but the 80s didn't start very well for him. His candidacy to the French election brought him a great deal of troubles (some still believe his death in 1986 wasn't accidental) and it did create much turbulences in his marital life, by the time the film was released, he had left his comic troop and divorced. And so maybe that role was a medicine he needed, a low-key comedy without much emphasis on his buffoonish manners, a film where he would act normally like a good guy willing to teach.

So much fuss could have been made out of the popular clown teaching a class and there's a fair amount of archetypes to justify the use of school as a comedic premise. At first it seems that the film is going to take that direction, it has its share of teacher's pets and bullies, an obnoxious brat you can't punish because his father is the mayor, you also get the depressed suicidal spinster ironically named Lajoie (Josiane Balasko) and the leftist unionized teacher (Jean Giraud) always at odds with the principal (Jacques Debary). Berri's writing has a way to make these people colorful but never caricatures.

And watching the film, I could measure the degree of decline of French comedy. The equivalent of a film like this would be "Profs" or "Ducobu", adaptations of comic books, which is exactly what French comedy has turned to: stock characters aiming to generate some laughs and crowd-pleasing diversity, the easy way. "School Master" doesn't care for that or cares just enough to make the inclusion of an African and an Arab kid something genuine, not designed to be politically correct. Things have changed on that level too.

"School Master" is different on another level: there's no particular narrative arc, everything goes fine for Barbier and situations unfold quietly without a particular call for tension-inducing situations. So many things could happen: an incident with a child, a romance, a hostage situation, fire, but Berri would have none of these. It's the kind of film where a teacher talks to kids about homosexuality and hormones and the Academy inspector doesn't even notice it and give sound advice to the newcomer.

One would then ask the purpose of a film without any particular stakes?

I guess having Coluche as a teacher was just a good idea. Simply said. It's such a simple idea that the film is driven by its own tenderness and respect toward school. You see Barbier as a man working in a clothes shop defending a child who stole boots and when he's fired he decides to start teaching. The first interview is still relevant today: he's told that he's joining the noblest government corporation but also the poorest and. In fact, I was surprised that even back then, teachers were complaining about the downfall of education, the so-called new techniques of child awakening etc. Quite an eye-opening experience.

But like a pupil spacing out in the class, Barbier hears these complaints without much listening, all he cares is just handling the course and if needed improvising a little, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I was wondering how much of the scenes were scripted but I think Coluche can't fake his emotions, let alone with kids. It's hard enough to get good acting from kids, inspire genuine reacting is the best option. Coluche is natural and feels natural. Two years later, he'd be even more natural in the masterpiece "So Long, Stooge" that will earn him the French Oscar.

I said 1981 was kind of a dark year for the actor and watching him during a promotional interview, he didn't seem to have recovered from it and I hope he could find some comfort making that film. "School Master" has a heart at the right place and doesn't try to preach something or revolutionize new techniques, some little parts didn't age very like a kid smoking or one sharing a bed with an adult although Barbier never comes across as the creepy type. He's got good will, he tries to please the principal, is loyal to his fiancée (Charlotte de Turkheim) and never tries to abuse from Lajoie's desperateness and give good advice to a girl whose parents are divorced. Maybe it was his own experience speaking?

I liked the film and I suspect I would have cherished its memory had I discovered it earlier. It's also a time capsule of the early 80s where schools didn't look from those I'd occupy by the end of the decade. There's also that catchy little song by Richard Gotainer 'Sampa" that has nothing to do with the theme but gives the perfect playful tone to the little film, the title song from Alain Souchon at the end credits works even better... in a sooting way.

What else to say, Barri who debuted with a childhood film named "The Old Man and the Child" seems to still have it. He can make comedy look as fluid and ordinary as reality and like for Michel Simon, he knew the asset was Coluche being himself. The minimalism paid off with 3 million viewers that year. Indeed, this is film that doesn't work despite its limitation but because of them.

I may seem harsh in my rating as this movie is well-intended and shows a vision of school that tends to near the ideal many have. The characters are likeable and Coluche seems in his element as a teacher with the kids.

However the comedy in itself is uneven and more the addition of sketches, missing a guiding principle - and a story. It reveals however quite a lot of that period, released after the win of Mitterrand and the left for the first time after WWII, the optimism and idealism that were again possible.