THE TEACHER’S LOUNGE – Review by Leslie Combemale
The Teacher’s Lounge takes issues like the perpetration of stereotypes, the malleability of truth, the challenges of the educational system and the growing feelings of alienation that plague modern society and examines them through one cautionary tale.
Leonie Benesch plays Carla Nowak, a teacher working at a junior high where the faculty is dealing with petty theft. A little money, some pencils, and other small items have been disappearing. Carla takes it upon herself to try to suss out the culprit, but it leads to accusations, bad feelings, and worse, with members of both the faculty and student body. That may not sound like its 98 minutes are all high pressure, but in director/co-screenwriter Ilker Çatak’s capable hands, they are.
Some of the greatest successes of the film are based in constraints. There is a tautness to the score created by scoring artist Marvin Miller composing with only four instruments. His use of staccato strings is integral to the way the tension is built, scene by scene. There is also both only one location (the school grounds) and a limited color palette used for the production design, which allows a laser focus on what is actually happening.
Ultimately, though, it is the performances that give Ilker Çatak and Johannes Duncker’s screenplay the needed urgency to pull off the story. It’s like the the ensemble cast are working together to make the entirety of the running time feel like one long crescendo building to its conclusion. It may seem like Leonie Benesch’s film, but it is her playing against the kids, Leonard Stettnisch as Oskar, along various combinations of his classmates, as well as Benesch and the actors playing teachers and parents that make this unfortunate scenario so believable. One wonders, too, if the fact that the filmmakers chose to pay all the child actors the same amount, whether they were heavily featured or had no speaking lines might be at least partially responsible for their exceptional ensemble performance.
Cinematically, it is often in specificity that we find universality, and that is certainly true for The Teacher’s Lounge. One teacher, her colleagues, and her students exemplify how good intentions and bad choices can lead to the worst possible outcome. It’s hard to watch, even as it resonates and demands we ask ourselves what we might have done in a similar situation.
4 1/2 out of 5 stars
