La Lutte des classes (2019)
Directed by Michel Leclerc

Film Review

One of the mainstream hits of 2010 was the punchy political comedy Le Nom des gens, in which writer-director Michel Leclerc and his co-writer Baya Kasmi took great delight in mocking the limits of political conviction in France today, particularly in those on the left-side of the political spectrum.  Almost a decade on, socialism still remains something of a dirty word in France, in spite of the social mayhem that rightwing president Nicolas Sarkozy has inflicted on the country.  In La Lutte des classes, Leclerc and Kasmi have another go at gentle left-bashing, although on this occasion they are hardly up to the task of lampooning one of the most pressing public concerns today: the future of state education.

In Leclerc's latest film (his fifth so far), a socially minded couple are faced with the unwelcome prospect of abandoning their dearly held leftwing values when it becomes apparent to them that their son's education might be better served by the private sector.  As Leclerc and Kasmi show, with their customary good-natured humour and flair for irony, this is no trivial matter.  Set against a parents' moral duty to do their best for their offspring, there is the wider moral question over what happens to state education when those who can afford to abandon it altogether, leaving an under-funded, publicly run rump education system that exists only to keep the children of the poor off the streets.

La Lutte des classes sets up this polemic with commendable deftness in its first half but, having failed to present even a half-credible solution, concludes with the most ludicrously contrived happy ending you can imagine.  Part of the problem with the film is that - in contrast to the writing team's earlier satire - it uses far too broad a brush to make its point, with the result that the authors' more serious messages tend to get drowned in a sea of cliché and facile humour.

It doesn't help that the characters who are played so enthusiastically and sympathetically by Leïla Bekhti and Edouard Baer are the most egregious of caricatures - far more like what you would expect to find in a teenager's bande dessinée than in a considered piece of movie satire.  Even more depressing is the fact that, in order to make their case, the film's authors have to resort to the most extreme scenario conceivable - a little boy being completely abandoned by his classmates so that his face is the only white one in a swollen mass of brown at a sink school that would have difficulty overtaking St Trinians in the school league tables.  Yes, satirists will always exaggerate real situations for comic effect, but there's a limit to have far you can take this and Leclerc probably goes a few hundred steps too far towards the excessively inane in his less than dignified attempts to make us laugh.

A somewhat botched satire it might be, but La Lutte des classes still has some mileage as a feel-good crowdpleaser and, providing you don't take it too seriously, it will get you laughing.  There's plenty of fun to be found in Bekhti and Baer's hopeless struggle against the irresistible lure of bourgeoisification as they fail to reconcile their parental responsibilities with their wider duties to society.  This portrait of a morally conflicted couple being induced to 'sell out' for well-meaning but dubious motives succinctly encapsulates at least part of the widespread malaise that is presently ripping our society apart.  For all its flippant humour, the film does have a message for those perceptive enough to see it - we can indulge our self-interested individualism if we want to, but only if we are prepared to pay the price - a society that continues to crumble all around us.

Film Synopsis

Sofia, a successful lawyer of North African origin, and her husband Paul, an ageing drummer with a punk band, move to the pleasant suburb of Bagnolet on the outskirts of Paris.  Being inclined to the left politically, they have no qualms over sending their young son Corentin to the local state-run primary school.  But times are changing and, as the district becomes more racially mixed, standards at Corentin's school show a marked decline.

The better off parents move their beloved offspring to a nearby private Catholic school, which offers a far better education for those able to pay the fees.  It isn't long before Corentin's friends have all departed, leaving him the only white boy in his class.  Realising how unhappy their son has become, Sofia and Paul contemplate moving him to the better school.  But how can they square this with their political ideals?