In Laurent Cantent’s The Class (French title: Entr les murs/Between the Walls), a public school teacher in Paris grapples with frontiers that define and complicate his student body. The working class students, mostly of African, arab, and Chinese descent – question, doubt, and reinforce their French identity (”which soccer team do you root for in Paris if you’re from the Ivory Coast?”) by critiquing their professor’s syllabus, and in effect, the European world view.

What is the relevance indeed of French grammar, when urban slang is what resonates with these children? There are quite a few Trojan Horse questions The Class asks with a refreshingly clear head. Its lucid, economic presentation and improvised performances give the film an attractive realist flair. In the final analysis, The Class stands as a noble effort among the largely saccharine “populist” white teacher/black student film genre for asking the right questions with a liveliness that contains a semblance to life.