La Journée de la jupe (2009) - film review

Sonia Bergerac is a teacher in an ordinary inner city high school on the outskirts of Paris.  She is about to start a lesson on Molière when her class is disrupted by unruly pupils.  In the course of a violent altercation, a handgun falls from a bag.  Sonia snatches it up and fires a shot, injuring one of her students.  Now that she has a captive audience, Sonia can at last do the job she is paid to do...

Remember the good old days, when teaching was a respectable profession and teachers were able to do their job without fear of being assaulted, mutilated, driven to a nervous breakdown or dragged into court on a trumped up paedophilia charge?   La Journée de la jupe offers one solution that will take us back to these halcyon days and restore order in the classroom: equip educators with firearms and allow them to pump lead into any recalcitrant yob who dares to step out of line.  Jean-Paul Lilienfeld’s off-the-wall social thriller may be clumsily provocative but it does at least raise a serious issue which the politcians and pedagogues have yet to resolve.  Just how can teachers educate our children if they no longer have any authority in the classroom?  

The main attraction of La Journée de la jupe is Isabelle Adjani riding high in her second big comeback.  After a six year break from cinema, she returns with fire in her belly and a performance to knock ’em dead - appropriately enough since she plays a psychotic teacher with a distinct touch of the Arnold Schwarzeneggers about her.  It is part that appears to have been tailor-made for the actress, who is at her best when she can make good use of her penchant for histrionic excess.  The role isn’t particularly challenging; all that is required is to shout a lot and look suitably sinister.  Still Adjani pulls it off admirably and was rewarded with yet another Best Actress César (her fifth so far) in 2010.  The film itself is fun and thought-provoking, even if its political subtext is somewhat lacking in subtlety.

© James Travers 2010

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