The Teachers' Lounge (2023)
Time: 1h 38mins
Director: Ilker Çatak
Quick Summary: When one of her students is suspected of theft, teacher Carla Nowak decides to get to the bottom of the matter. Caught between her ideals and the school system, the consequences of her actions threaten to break her
I'm sorry but she had evidence that very clearly narrowed it down to one person.
Mostly I was frustrated by this as there wasn't a very clear ending and everyone reacts to things in the most extreme way. I commend the teacher on not losing her shit because I would have. Literally everyone but her was a bitch and extremely childish, I was actually baffled at how many of the adults were worse than the kids. Every good intention she tries it backfires and you watch as it slowly drains her.
Everyone is unlikable, even the teacher as she has her moments, but everyone has their own negative light to show their bad side. They all clash with different opinions, and people make assumptions by association.
It felt constantly tense, something was always happening to make things worse; gossiping or spreading rumours; things being misunderstood; things being blown out of proportion; and people being straight-up snakey. So many opinions and ideas are thrown around, and you never really know what's true. It's tough as you feel for the teacher trying to take things into her own hands and catch the thief with evidence, but then it breaks some sort of law about recording with consent and becomes a huge secret until the police see it.
We're left to make assumptions as we only see what the teacher sees, no background stuff, and you feel her frustration. In a world full of dishonesty, racism, classism, cheating, and all other things like this, we have someone desperately trying to strive for justice, right and wrong, and mostly second chances. Leonie Benesch is amazing and shows so much range within one person.
It's beautifully shot in muted blues and white colours so it's sort of dull feeling but not uneasy on the eye. Along with that, it's shot in 4:3 ratio, which is basically a small square, giving us that claustrophobic feeling that our teacher is probably feeling.
While I did like this very much, I was left feeling very frustrated by the end. We didn't get a clear ending, we're left to make our own assumptions, which is fine, but this feels like it's constantly building up to something blowing up. So to have it end pretty abruptly was equally as frustrating as the events in this film. People are too snakey for my liking too, I feel like it needed a neutral character who neither agreed or disagreed with either side and saw the straight facts.
It did have its duller moments too where we just sit and watch people sit in negativity and mope. I am glad it had a short run time for that reason, otherwise, this would have really dragged, because by the time we got to near the end, I was ready for it to finish.
This is good, frustrating but so tense and interesting to watch. It's wonderful to watch someone stand strongly after so much pressure has been put on them and keep it professional too.
7/10
Comments
Post a Comment