SXSW Review: Monsieur Lazhar

I have been delinquent in my SXSW reviews but I have to excuse myself by begging Waiting for Lightning whirlwind.  We just finished the DC LA Screening at the Arclight Cinerama Dome this week and it was fantastic.  Now I'm ready to go back and write some reviews about the films I saw in Austin.

I want to start with Philippe Falardeau's Monsieur Lazhar because I think I enjoyed it the most.  A French Canadian film, it felt very French to me in several ways.  First of all, the film seemed to be content to exist in the moment presented, without trying to explain too much of the past (some was necessary) or resolve too much of the future.  It just existed.  I was reading an article on Camus and Sartre the other day and I realized how much this simple approach to storytelling, almost a matter of fact fatalism which is simultaneously oddly optimistic, which I have recognized in so many French films, is in fact the cultural inheritance of the existentialists, whose philosophy pervaded modern French culture in the 1940's and 50's seeping into it's very core.  It was this that I enjoyed about the film, the simple sweetness of the story of a substitute teacher trying to bring a sense of normalcy and eventually happiness to class of middle school students mourning their much beloved teacher.

Monsieur Lazhar (Mohamed Fellag) is a good man, trying to make the situation better for the children in the class and trying to find employment and distraction for himself in his adoptive country as he seeks political asylum, fearing to return to his native Algeria.  Fellag does an excellent job in this role and we completely sympathize with Monsieur Lazhar as a man trying to make a new life while he struggles with a different culture and the shadows of his past.

Monsieur Lazhar's teaching methods are fairly old-fashioned, which causes conflict in this upper middle class, modern Canadian middle school.  As he attempts to connect to the children, he does succeed in reaching Alice (Sophie Nélisse), a direct and perceptive young girl, angered and troubled by their teacher's suicide.  Nélisse is excellent as Alice.  Her pensive, saucer-like eyes and Falardeau's use of simple framing suck you into the character's mind and feelings effortlessly.  Falardeau has done an excellent job of creating a natural, simple, and beautiful story of love, loss, forgiveness, and acceptance.