November
21
Lunching with The Class's Laurent Cantet
[Posted by Steve Chagollan]
Having covered a few City of Lights, City of Angels French showcases, I’ve been invited to the occasional lunch at the French Consul General's home in Beverly Hills. One such event last year, for La Vie en Rose Oscar-winner Marion Cotillard, was mobbed by media and industryites. But last Wednesday was more typical of such affairs. Laurent Cantet — director of Cannes Palm d’Or winner The Class, France’s official entry for Academy’s foreign-language competition — was the guest of honor, sitting at the head of an outdoor table lined with few more than a dozen attendees, including the host, David Martinon.
The 46-year-old filmmaker, handsome in an austere way with a head of silvery hair and a no-nonsense air, spoke good English but occasionally relied on an interpreter. We talked about Cantet’s cinema verite methodology on The Class; he workshopped his on actors for a year before shooting began.
Because Cantet has been promoting the film — which covers a year in the life of an inner city junior high school teacher and the relationship with his combative, racially mixed students — practically nonstop since its triumph in Cannes, he shook his head in bewilderment when asked what he was now working on now. He hasn’t had a moment to think about it, much less spend time with his family in Paris.
The film was three years in the making. And despite the fact that he’s used largely non-actor casts in past films — most notably in Human Resources (1999) and slightly less so for his devastating Time Out (2001) and the equally penetrating Heading South (2005), which starred Charlotte Rampling — he says his experience on The Class convinced him that this was the way he wanted to work from now on: unadulterated naturalism from non-pros who are re-enacting everyday situations. The most obvious parallels are the films of Mike Leigh, but Cantet takes it even further, to the point where the camera seems like a fly on the wall.
Compared to the kind of Hollywood bloat that’s commonplace in most studio films, Cantet shot his movie with a 15-person crew, using the cinematographer with whom he’s collaborated from the beginning, Pierre Milon, a fellow student at France’s most prestigious film school, L’IDHEC. However, when it came to shooting the film in widescreen — which actually results in the reverse effect of making the drama appear more intimate — Cantet credited his assistant editor Stephanie Leger, who suggested to Cantet that he letterbox the images during rushes, and he stuck with the framing device from there on in.
The film, which opens here Dec. 25, has been a box office success in France, where films of a more commercial variety are the popular norm, and a lightening rod for political discussions about education and ethnic assimilation. Reactions from teachers has been mixed. “Most of them were afraid that parents would know what actually happens in a class,” he said.
Of course, talk of politics made me ask Cantet what he — or the French in general — thought of the recent American presidential election. He acknowledged that, for a change, the U.S. appeared more progressive than France. “I think, for example, France is not ready to elect a Black or an Arabic president,” he said.
Regardless, Cantet added that Barack Obama’s victory went a long way toward repairing the strained relationship between France and the U.S. In fact, the French followed events here so closely, “they celebrated the election just as if it was a French election,” said Cantet. “Also, I think, everybody had a feeling that we were living a historical moment.” On that there was general agreement at the table.
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