Class, The

Variety Justin Chang

Talky in the best sense, the film exhilarates with its lively, authentic classroom banter while its emotional undercurrents build steadily but almost imperceptibly over a swift 129 minutes. One of the most substantive and purely entertaining movies in competition at Cannes this year.

Time Richard Schickel

It is hard to think of another film more tightly autobiographical than this one. It's even harder to think of other films that build so gripping a narrative out of a string of comparatively minor and disparate incidents.

Slate Dana Stevens

This unassuming movie will nail you to your seat.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

In a class by itself.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

Cantet's real-time classroom scenes are revelations: They make you understand that teaching is moment to moment, an endless series of negotiations that hang on intangibles—on imagination and empathy and the struggle to stay centered. This is a remarkable movie.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

The Class is clearly a microcosm of contemporary France, beset by social and economic tensions. More than that, though, it's a saga of education's struggles in many parts of the modern world. If only the film were pure fiction.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Wherever you were schooled, in public schools or private, in the slums or in the suburbs, you will recognize yourself in this film and laugh and beam and cower.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The movie is bursting with life, energy, fears, frustrations and the quick laughter of a classroom hungry for relief.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

This is one of the screen's most rewarding explorations of the teacher/student relationship in any language.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

I was much more disheartened leaving the movie the first time I saw it than I was the second. Its richness resides in its apparent objectivity. Without sacrificing a sense of hope, Cantet suggests that the school system is just like a certain vexing grammatical tense: imperfect but still fighting against irrelevance.

The New Yorker David Denby

I would be surprised if this brilliant and touching film didn't become required viewing for teachers all over the United States. Everyone else should see it as well--it's a wonderful movie.

Washington Post John Anderson

The Class is not just the best film released thus far this year. It may be the most gripping.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

The young cast, all nonactors who developed their characters with Cantet and Bégaudeau, brings the weight of full lives to each of the students.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

The Class ranks with the very best films ever made about teaching, and it's unlike any English or American film about teaching ever made.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

The beauty of The Class is that it puts the lie to the one-teacher-can-make-a-difference myth propagated by so many other films.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

The reality of François' classroom is so intense that it holds our interest even while the film's dramatic focus is building so quietly under the surface that we don't notice it at first.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

Here Mr. Cantet -- whose earlier features include "Human Resources" and "Time Out," two other dramas about systems of power -- has done that rarest of things in movies about children: He has allowed them to talk.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

The Class is a lovely, exhilarating work about the ways in which failure and frustration can open the pathways through which we make sense out of life.

Village Voice Ella Taylor

For anyone who loves language, this cut-and-thrust is a heady delight, so rich and free-flowing in its rhythms that it's hard to decide whether what we're seeing is a vérité-style documentary or a realist drama.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

The keen observations of The Class ultimately become a remedial education in themselves.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Considering the strength of performances given by the 25-or-so teenage actors portraying the students, it's amazing that none of them have previous experience.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

French movies are not so neatly resolved. In fact, the point of many French movies, such as this provocative one from director Laurent Cantet, is that some problems don't have satisfying solutions - or resolutions.

USA Today Claudia Puig

The Class is a deeply moving film about the challenges of educating children in a complex and often turbulent world.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Fierce, funny and moving, The Class graduates with honors. It's unmissable.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

A modestly scaled, sharply observed film.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Most impressive, Cantet tracks the racial and ethnic resentments that simmer beneath the classroom discussions but become harder to quell when the parents get involved.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

Skillfully straddles an intriguing line between reality and fiction.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

This is the most realistic film about teaching that you're ever likely to see.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

The Class offers no Hollywood ending, but is rewarding for those up to the challenge.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

The Class is simultaneously old school and new, familiar in its themes but unique in design and, at its best, riveting in execution.

Film Threat Matthew Sorrento

The Class is a one-trick show: once you spot its approach, the narrative falls into a routine. To the "nsiders," the film is as familiar as an an aerial virtual reality ride would be to an airplane pilot. (This is hardly a surprise, since Bégaudeau was himself once an insider, though now safe in a film critic's chair.)