A Teacher

So I guess instead of a real script, it's easier to have 4 intimate scenes in 20 minutes?! So much pointless filler, like her family issues. Then there was the soundtrack... It's difficult for this subject matter to be really boring, But they pulled it off.

Coming in at 75 minutes, if it were any shorter it would have been a TV Pilot, but if it were any longer I would have hated it.

An interesting dive into the mind and emotion of a female teacher who has a sexual relationship with one of her students. Lindsay Burdge, the actress playing the teacher, did an excellent job for most of the movie at being seemingly normal, but obviously mentally unstable. Near the last third of the movie however, she seemed to cross the line of believable and over the top a few too many times for me.

The approach of the movie was interesting in that we start well into their relationship, as the teacher's life starts to unravel. The time span of when the movie took place was relatively short, and the movie focused more on her and her emotions than it did on the relationship, which I really liked.

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.

I am not sure where the bad reviews come from unless they are from people upset with the subject matter. It is Hollywood people get over it. If people voted on movies based on moral compass than many would get a 4/10.

The Hot teacher thing is a double standard. This kid is a senior, 17+ which is the age of consent in many states. Let's not dwell on the possible criminal element of the movie. I don't know of any 17 year old horny males that would feel violated by a hot young female teacher. NONE. OK so enough of that.

These 2 have a hot fling. Obviously if anyone finds out about it her career would be over. He seems mature for his age and I thought the acting was well done and these 2 actors did a great job of pretending to be into each other.

Things start to go a little astray when she realizes she is really infatuated with this kid.

I thought the film and story was beautiful and artistically well done. The dialogue was real and I understand much of it was improvised.

It is short only about 1hr 15 min but it is worth a watch.

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.