Primaire (2017)
Directed by Hélène Angel

Film Review

For her fourth feature, Primaire, free-ranging indie filmmaker Hélène Angel takes us back into the classroom and offers a lesson in how personal instincts and professional duties can lead to bitter conflict.  Angel first attracted attention with her idiosyncratic debut feature Peau d'homme coeur de bête (1999), and since she has led an exemplary auteur career tackling social themes that interest her greatly.  Primaire is her most engaging film to date, and this it owes primarily to the casting of Sara Forestier in the central role.  Since she came to prominence through her leading part in Abdellatif Kechiche's acclaimed L'Esquive (2004), Forestier has become one of France's acting luminaries, a gift for any self-respecting auteur filmmaker.  As the committed primary school teacher in Angel's film she is never less than convincing and it is a testament to her ability as a performer that whole swathes of the film have a striking near-documentary realism - particularly the sequences in the classroom, which have the same appealing sur le vif quality of what we find in Nicolas Philibert's Être et avoir (2002).

Where the film is somewhat less impressive is when Angel tries - somewhat ineptly - to manoeuvre her film into more conventional drama territory.  The script deficiencies become all too evident when Vincent Elbaz shows up and practically destroys the film's integrity with what is probably his screen worst performance to date.  Compared with the classroom scenes, where Forestier's interaction with her lively class of infants is extraordinarily true to life, there is nothing remotely convincing in the forced romantic relationship between the teacher and the stand-in father of the neglected little boy she has taken under her wing.  Primaire feels like two contrasting approaches to the same subject that have been badly welded together.  Although the sentiment is trowelled on a little too thickly in parts, it is hard not to engage with Angel's sincerely felt personal tribute to those remarkable people who devote their lives not only to educating our children but also instilling in them the values we hold dear.  But this commendable aspect of the film is undermined by the melodramatic contrivances that are smothered on top, with as much dexterity as someone touching up an Old Master with a 6-inch paint roller.  Primaire enchants and disappoints in roughly equal measure.

Film Synopsis

Florence is a primary school teacher who is completely devoted to her work.  Her pupils are everything to her, as precious to her as if they were her own children.  She has a particular interest in a little boy named Sacha, a problem child who is being neglected by his mother.  Florence arranges to meet up with Matthieu, an ex-boyfriend of Sacha's mother, and immediately establishes an emotional bond with him.  As she becomes increasingly preoccupied with Sacha, the teacher neglects her own son and ends up putting at risk both her family and her career...