A Teacher (Hannah Fidell, 2013)

[Sonmi451]

Consider me fairly baffled by the decent praise for Hannah Fidell and her debut feature A Teacher, about a female high school teacher who has an affair with one of her students. I found it to be one of the most hackneyed, poorly written, laughably bad supposedly good films I've seen in quite some time. Admittedly it does pick up some in the final third when Fidell ratchets up the tension, but I feel this is more down to the situation itself than the filmmaking, which is clumsy, at best.

[warren oates]

I was disappointed in A Teacher too, but I think you're being a little too hard on it and maybe for the wrong reasons. The direction and the performances are pretty compelling, especially for the sort of film this is aiming to be -- not a topical or broadbrush Afterschool Special or Lifetime Movie Network take on the subject matter, but a more elliptical, subjective, psychological, even European approach. If you want to get critical, I'd fault the writing first, mostly at the macro level, starting with the

Spoiler

too easy even for no-budget cop-out of a minimal

ending and the overall narrative construction. But I've seen way clumsier first features. Fidell still seems like a director worth watching.

[CSM126]

Having just seen A Teacher, I can only join Sonmi in being baffled by this film. It's just plain awful in nearly every regard. Admittedly, it is shot quite nicely, almost Kubrickian, but pretty photography cannot hide how embarassing everything else is. The writing is so limp, unfocused, and frankly childish that I'm surprised anyone thought it was worth throwing money at to make, but then you throw in the clumsy, clueless directing and the flat acting and it's a disaster. Ms. Fidell seems to believe that simply filming something in a long, unbroken shot will magically make it meaningful, like that bizarre scene in the teachers' lounge where the camera circles around Diana's head for what feels like eternity while she talks about the Sadie Hawkins dance. What am I supposed to glean from this endless, rotating shot of her hair? I'm sure Fidell saw something there but I don't think anyone else does. The running scenes that the movie constantly returns to are another meaningless trope that I'm sure are supposed to have dramatic heft, after all they have that hectic cacophony of strings and winds blaring on the soundtrack, practically screaming "This is important", but the movie never reveals why we should even want to see this footage. It just felt like an amateur filmmaker throwing stuff at the audience because "it looks dramatic" and therefore it must give her movie heft. But the opposite is true: this movie as so little actual content that it could easily blow away on the slightest breeze. A Teacher is embarassing to watch because it's attempts at artfulness are so weak and pathetic, and they reek of desperation.