We never find out about his home life or his personal life, though one pupil offers a cheeky speculation, which is to be subtly important. This dialogue consists in sharing the pieces of truth that every single individual, students and teachers alike, have gathered in their lives. I am quite modest so I'm going to say I hope I was good, I hope I was believable, but it is the audience who decides. The English-language version of Entre les murs was published in April 2009 by Seven Stories Press under the title The Class.

The plot centres around a pivotal exchange between the teacher and a recalcitrant student, Souleymane, where the wrong choice of words leads to a dramatic unravelling of the classroom's febrile peace. Although it was developed as a fictional construct, perhaps the pupils of Cantet's class ended up learning more than they thought. Souleymane cheekily tells François that he has heard the teacher "likes men" - and insolently says that this is not his own accusation, just something he has heard.

Meirieu is concerned about the reading that can be made of the film, which, by showing the difficulties and the explosive situation that emerges, suggests that there is no alternative or which would reinforces authoritarianism and anti-pedagogism. So, out of the corner of our eyes, we see the girl who absent-mindedly twirls a loop of hair round her finger, the boy who balances backwards in his chair against the wall and the unexplained fits of giggles and whispers. The end result is extremely realistic, but it is a chiaroscuro form of realism, with each nuance of teenage behaviour so subtly drawn that it feels almost like a police procedural transplanted to different soil. While the film looks and feels like a documentary, there is a narrative at work here, which slowly reveals itself about halfway through the picture.

At a teachers' conference to decide final placings, François defends Souleymane but his efforts are undermined by the two student representatives at the meeting, Esmeralda and Louise, who behave in a very childish manner.Filming took place during the 2007 summer holidays and, at the end of it, Cantet had 150 hours of footage that he edited down to just over two hours. The comparison is legitimate but a bit weak, mostly because The Class focuses less on the Greeek tragedy structure typical of school-set dramas. Marin encounters his share of problem students, teen violence, ethnic tensions between classmates and education barriers within the group, all of which test his patience and -- more importantly -- his resolve as an educator. Not surprisingly, when word of a cinematic adaptation came out, Bégaudeau wanted to be involved, contributing to the screenplay and taking on the lead role, virtually playing himself.

There isn't really a point in talking about performances, save for the adults, who are nonetheless teachers in real life. In stark contrast to films like Dead Poets Society or Mr Holland's Opus, where the characters' private lives and extra-curricular activities drive the drama, The Class shows us Mr Marin trying to explain the intricacies of grammar to his students, and lets the film's themes arise from these discussions. One of the most valuable and relevant life lessons that my University has taught me is the purpose of education itself. For Esmeralda, the most important message of the film was "to show we are all so different but, in the end, we all stand up for Souleymane.Fictionalizing that Esmeralda had read Plato's Republic was idiotic, and her explanation was atrocious. He eventually finds himself facing his angry class and trying to convince them that the word has a much more innocent connotation than they believe, and this scene takes place not in Marin's home turf of the classroom, but outside in the schoolyard; the balance of power has shifted.

The Class was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but lost to Departures. This is because Cantet prepared the film by selecting thousands of real students for the various parts and then going through a year-long improvisation exercise with those who made it to the final cut.One of the first scenes of the film sets the tone and highlights the tension in the classroom: as the students work on the imperfect tense in French, one question from a student leads François to talk about the imperfect subjunctive (for the linguists among you, in the sentence, “il fallait que je fusse ” / “I had to be”, “fusse” is the imperfect subjunctive form of the verb “être”). For me, the film shows a lack of understanding between the teacher and the pupils and this misunderstanding exists in real life. The only thing I don't like is that on the film poster I'm making a face that I hate - it's bizarre to see yourself look so big. Still, that doesn't mean there aren't problems in the class, especially when most of the 13-year old kids in there are foreign (Moroccan, Chinese, etc. The film has received critical acclaim, achieving a 95% rating at Rotten Tomatoes out of 161 reviews counted, and an average rating of 8.