At a Montréal public grade school, an Algerian immigrant is hired to replace a popular teacher who committed suicide in her classroom. While helping his students deal with their grief, his own recent loss is revealed.
An unexpected charmer.
Monsieur Lazhar was nominated for this year’s best foreign language Oscar. It lost to Iran’s A Separation but, like that film, it is an unsentimental parable about connection – and a lesson in how to build an affecting movie without resorting to familiar tropes.
The result is a shrewd look at classroom etiquette and an achingly sad study of grief-stricken solitude, built on ace performances by Fellag and the kids-especially 11-year-old scene stealer Sophie Nélisse.
While there’s something commendable about the way this 2012 French-Canadian Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language film strives to subvert the usual clichés of the dreaded inspirational teacher genre with subtle acting (the young kids are particularly good) and a lack of sentimentality, it does hinge on a fallacious and naïve plot contrivance.
Only the most obstreperous delinquent could fail to be charmed by Monsieur Lazhar.
This is a sensitive, finely judged drama shot through with sincerity, but it never quite catches fire.
Philippe Falardeau's classroom drama is an A-grade heartbreaker.
Falardeau, despite handling weighty questions, moves the film along with an unfussy grace and a bright sense of location.
A gently orchestrated message of survival steeped in the honesty and innocence of a school classroom.
Oscar-nominated in this year's Best Foreign Language category, it's one of few movies to be set in a school that don't keep trying to teach us something.
The end sends you out of the cinema in a positive frame of mind, but it's neither triumphalist nor unrealistic. Some teachers will learn from it. All teachers will find it a reaffirmation of their vocation.
An Oscar nominee at this year's Academy Awards and for good reason, Falardeau's film is moving, smart and sensitive. Terrific stuff, in short.
A class act. Touching but never sentimental, Lazhar is a sensitive, hopeful treaty on grief and innocence lost.
Edinburgh Filmhouse, Edinburgh from Friday May 4, 2012, until Thursday May 17, 2012. More info: www.filmhousecinema.com
Glasgow Film Theatre, Glasgow from Friday May 4, 2012, until Thursday May 10, 2012. More info: http://www.glasgowfilm.org/theatre/