Les Grands esprits (2017)
Directed by Olivier Ayache-Vidal

Film Review

Les Grands esprits (a.k.a. The Teacher) marks the feature debut for director Olivier Ayache-Vidal, who has already garnered favourable notices for his short films Coming-out (2004) and Welcome to China (2012).  Before becoming a filmmaker, Ayache-Vidal pursued a busy career as a photo-journalist and scripted a number of graphic novels including Fox One: Armageddon.  For his first film, he tackles a subject that is currently a hot topic in France, namely the inadequacies of an under-resourced and ineffective education system.

Ayache-Vidal is by no means the first film maker to look at state education in France.  From Claude Berri's Le Maître d'école (1981) to Michel Leclerc's La lutte des classes (2019) via Laurent Cantet's exemplary Entre les murs (2008), the subject has had plenty of cinematic exposure for many decades.  Although Les Grands esprits is effective in reminding us of what is wrong with state education at the present time, it doesn't really have much that is new to say on the subject.  It does at least offer some grounds for optimism that the failings it identifies might be put right, given an appropriate input of political will and public funding,

Somewhat prone to cliché and caricature, the screenplay does little to impress and leaves you feeling that the film is dealing far too glibly and superficially with issues that deserve to be treated more seriously. To some extent, Denis Podalydès makes up for the shortcomings in the writing, turning in a convincing interpretation of a teacher from a more privileged stratum of the education system struggling to adapt to the impossible demands of public schooling - there are striking similarities with his similar portrayal in Daniel Duval's Le Temps des porte-plumes (2006).  Abdoulaye Diallo shows promise in his debut screen role, one that establishes a pleasing cross-class rapport with Podalydès's well-meaning but naive private sector teacher.  Les Grands esprits is not a particularly memorable or original film, but its heart is in the right place and it leaves you more aware than ever of the challenges facing state education in France today.

Film Synopsis

François Foucault is a highly qualified literature teacher at one of Paris's most prestigious schools, Henri-IV.  The forty-something educationalist deplores the quality of teaching in the capital's neglected suburbs and insists that the only way to raise standards is to send better teachers into these benighted schools.  His words do not fall on deaf ears.  In fact, they are picked up by a representative of the education ministry, who is convinced that Foucault may well have hit the nail on the head.  The next thing he knows François is being ejected from his comfortable educational establishment and compelled to take up a post in one of the very schools he decried.

It is the kind of school that gives education a bad name in France and François's job is to try to work out what is wrong by making a close study of both the teachers and their seemingly unteachable students.  It isn't long before the well-intentioned Foucault discovers how greatly he has underestimated the problems faced by teachers in schools attended by pupils from the most disadvantaged backgrounds.  Having spent his entire professional career educating the offspring of the privileged minority, François finally has his eyes opened to the challenges faced by most teachers in France today...