quebec

Continuing my series of pre­views of films playing at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, I’ve chosen another Canadian film, announced yes­terday at TIFF’s press con­fer­ence. Director Philippe Falardeau knocked me out a few years back with C’est pas moi, je le jure! (It’s Not Me, I Swear!), a nos­talgic por­trait of a young trouble­maker that man­aged to be sweet even as it detailed some rather hor­rific mis­be­ha­viour. I’m hopeful that Falardeau’s new film, Monsieur Lazhar will be able to blend the sen­ti­ment and the grit just as effect­ively. It will have its Canadian premiere at TIFF, after playing inter­na­tion­ally this week at the Locarno Film Festival.

Like his pre­vious film, this one is also an adapt­a­tion. In this case, it’s from Bachir Lazhar, a play by Evelyne de la Chenelière. Algerian immig­rant Bachir Lazhar takes over an ele­mentary school class still grieving for their pre­vious teacher, who has com­mitted sui­cide. Gradually, we dis­cover that, in addi­tion to helping his stu­dents work though their grief, Monsieur Lazhar is dealing with his own per­sonal tragedy.

Falardeau is again working with chil­dren, but I trust that he’ll por­tray the stu­dents as real char­ac­ters, working their way through unfa­miliar and fright­ening ter­ritory. As someone who trained to be a teacher, I have always loved films about teachers and their stu­dents, from corny stuff like Les Choristes (The Chorus) to more gritty stuff like Entre les murs (The Class) and Être et avoir (To Be and To Have). And isn’t it strange that the first three films that came to mind are all in the French lan­guage as well.

There’s some­thing moving in seeing not just the trans­mis­sion of know­ledge from teacher to stu­dent, but the form­a­tion of emo­tional con­nec­tions as well. In many cases, teachers act as sur­rogate par­ents for chil­dren who have less-than-ideal family lives. Falardeau points out some­thing with which I agree very strongly:

[T]here is…another dimen­sion quite dear to me that sur­faced in the film, although it wasn’t in the play. It’s the entire ques­tion of the codi­fic­a­tion of rela­tion­ships between chil­dren and adults in schools. Over the years, we have estab­lished rules that forbid adults from touching chil­dren, no matter what the cir­cum­stances, even if it is just to “put sun­screen on their back,” as the gym teacher char­acter com­ments. We very well under­stand the reasons behind these rules and what’s at stake with them. But the result is that teachers, par­ents and even the chil­dren walk on eggs whenever it comes to showing a cer­tain form of affec­tion or close­ness. The ques­tion is extremely del­icate and con­sti­tutes a pivotal moment in the film. I think the film speaks a great deal about this, imper­cept­ibly at first, until the end where the sub­ject matter becomes explicit.

In my opinion, the film­makers from the province of Québec have been cre­ating Canada’s strongest cinema for a long time now, and I’m very much looking for­ward to seeing more from Falardeau and other young dir­ectors from “la belle province.”

SCREENINGS:

• Sunday September 11, 9:45pm — TIFF Bell Lightbox 2
• Wednesday September 14, 3:30pm — AMC 7

Tagged as: #tiff11, canada, preview, quebec

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