A Trama

Laurent Canter, the director, is mainly known for "Entre les murs". The start of this movie makes us think we will watch something similar. Instead of a class of teenagers, a workshop, with young adult. However, instead of describing the relationship between the members - one of the things he does best, Laurent Cantet focuses this time on one of the workshop participant and make this movie a social thriller. That young man is indeed disturbing for everybody - and quite disturbed.

Some scenes are working well, and we cannot deny that an artist trying not to repeat itself is a good thing. However the best scenes in my opinion still are the group scenes and the combination of thriller and social movie does not intertwin always completely and are sometimes working againts each other (the thriller loosened by the social part and vice versa).

The social topics are really topical, and relevant, and addresses quite well the issues young underprivileged women and men can meet in our society. It doesn't bring answers, it shows. It makes it possible for the spectator to try the different shoes the movie's characters are. In that regard, the movie is a success.

The storyline concerns a successful novelist who is hired to come to a French town experiencing a post shipbuilding industrial decline to give a workshop to a half dozen young adults (late teens/early 20s) on developing writing/creative thinking skills. Not clear if it's to help develop the youth's futures, or to become writers, or learn cooperative skills, or become well adjusted. The author encourages them to "Do research to make your fiction more real." Good potential for some insight on writing, but what we get for the movie is a lot of immature antagonistic aggressive back and forth from the group which leads me to believe the movie is more about exposing the differences amongst them (racial, gender, religious, political). Some cooperative understanding did surface, but a lot was left unclear which probably mirrors life.

The French film, "The Workshop", is a difficult film for me to review. On one hand, I appreciated that it dared to address some important social issues facing the country and many other countries. But, on the other, the message seems confusing and will likely leave many viewers wondering what the picture was trying to say…or, if it was trying to say anything at all.

The story is set in a small town which is experiencing hard times. The local shipyard was closed long ago and there is a sense of malaise over the place. Because of this, it's surprising that a published author like Olivia (Marina Fois) would come all the way here to teach a summer course on creative writing. Seven students have signed up for the class and its freestyle structure leads to these young adults revealing who they are and what they think during the discussions. Several of the students are defensive because they are Muslims and the class is working on a murder mystery…and they don't want the characters or story to come off as anti-Muslim. But one of the students, a loner named Antoine (Matthieu Lucci) seems to take pleasure out of baiting his fellow students and bucking the group-think that has been established in the class. Over time, Olivia begins to worry that Antoine actually might harbor real fantasies of murder…and his social media account and that of his friends seem to indicate this is a real possibility. The story, at this point, is pretty interesting and I was hooked. Unfortunately, the teacher's actions and Antoine's from this point on are unpredictable, often confusing and really left me wondering what the message was supposed to be in the picture. In other words, it all seemed to fall apart at the end and left some of the viewers baffled. It's all a shame, as there really are some interesting story elements and it could have been better.

Not unlike Laurent Cantet's famous movie "Entre les murs", this new one "The Workshop" (Originally "L'atelier", the film takes us to a class with different personalities. In both films we meet a group of French teenagers, brought together under the supervision of a teacher. Location is a French southern coastal town not far from Marseilles, La Ciotat, a town on the Mediterranean coast, which is beautifully filmed.

The Workshop starts off with a class i creative writing which is to make the script of a thriller novel, and develops into a story which seem to spiral out of control due to one of the students, Antoine, which is a smart guy, but with obvious right wing thoughts when it comes to politics, though he says politics isn't of interest.

La Ciotat is a port yard town in decline, but with nostalgic memories of its important past. The town is almost as a player in this itself, and when an elegant Parisian author Olivia Dejazet, great played by Marina Foïs, the student in the workshop finds her a snob. Dejazet is intrigued by the loner Antoine, with provocative attitude at the workshop. Antoine is brilliantly played by Matthieu Lucci, which is soon the main character in the movie. I won't tell more, except that it all spins out of control, and the film's best part is the tension and the question you start asking yourself.

I would say this film in a very good way discusses the problems of modern French society today, with the start tensions which should be a huge concern. The film also refers to the Bataclan massacre, the Norwegian right winged terrorist Behring Breivik and his massacres as well as the truck driving terror incidents. Terrorism is not all a muslim activity.

Political yes, but also a psychological drama between strong characters, and a French society under the microscope. I found the movie exiting in three ways. First what was going to happen, secondly what I would have done as the teacher, and thirdly the way the film takes up this discussion. I love that fact. the film is intelligent, and worth all the praise it's got from critics.

It's oh so French and whilst I'm a real Francophile it really doesn't go anywhere and ends very slowly. That said, it's atmospheric and at least reminded me of the huge difference in the French and British psyche when it comes to all forms of art.

Vive la différence.