It All Starts Today (1999)

A very mediocre French series "l'instit" contributed to giving the audience a false picture of the schoolteacher.In that poor sitcom ,actor Gerard Klein was some kind of superhero (on a motorcycle!) who acted like a pacifist Zorro or K2000.Bertrand Tavernier and his wonderful thespian ,Philippe Torreton,de la Comédie Française set the record straight.First of all,this is a true story,inspired by a schoolteacher's books.And Tavernier is an artist whose best works ("l'horloger de Saint-Paul" "la mort en direct" and his masterpiece" la vie et rien d'autre")deal with the dignity of man. And as the title says "the future begins today" as everything is possible when the man's young can still wonder,discover,and ... perhaps love the world before he discovers the darker side of it.Because ,for most of the children we meet in this movie,the darker side is at their door,inside their houses,and School is the only way for them of getting away with a somber future.There are courageous lines against the Champagne socialists -When the movie was released,there were commies in the French government-"I could have expected more from a communist mayor!" the teacher says to the notable who closes the canteen to the children whose family is no longer able to pay.There is a very realistic scene between the teacher and his inspector.Although the former 's work is admirable,the state employee slags him off because he's blind and deaf to the world outside him,all he wants to do is to climb the upper rungs of the social ladder .Never the inspector hints at the children's plight,his narrow-minded view remains abstract and completely mindless:how could a group of four year old toddlers be autonomous?A Tribute to the teachers ,who now more than ever need gratefulness and understanding,Tavernier's movie is deeply moving and deserves to be highly recommended.He equals Kenneth Loach here,not a small feat.

I don't know why I watched this film to the end. I recorded it from TV so I could have pressed STOP at any time. It's not like anything happened.As a slice of life, it was very well produced -- and the lead character must have spent a lot of time with the children to get to know them so well.However, it didn't really go anywhere. So it made the point that it's a tough life for parents and kids in a run-down neighbourhood. I could have guessed that anyway. And why did our activist hero have to have an attractive sculptor girlfriend? I'm not sure that this conformed to the otherwise gritty realism of the film.Six out of dix for effort.

Ça commence aujourd´hui is a film that allows to know life as it is. Through the life of the school´s children we approached the atmosphere of desolation of an old French mining town. At the same time, we approached the personal situation of the professor who is the conductive thread of history. The life breathed in the landscapes. To feel the near life and to experience the love and the pain, the happiness and the anguish, the vitality and the apathy.

This film would have been a fantastic documentary. Its contrived plot to make the statement is laid on so thick, it cannot even be saved by Cesar winner and Academie Francaise secretary Philippe Torreton's superb acting. It would have made more sense to spread the film's budget among the needy of this desperately problematic, depressed French town.