Joyce Glasser reviews The Lesson
For their low budget, self-financed debut feature film, Bulgarian Directors Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov took inspiration from a small, simple but intriguing local news story from a newspaper. They dug deep between the lines to imagine the circumstances and emotions leading to a school teacher’s surprising act and they position her dilemma in the context of a financial crisis that is putting a stressful squeeze on working class families throughout Europe.
Filmed on the streets of a real town with a mix of professional and non-professional actors, the directors go for natural, seemingly improvised dialogue and realism, dispensing with music and any shots likely to draw attention to the camera. The sound effects are therefore key. Before we see English teacher Nade (Gosheva) at the beginning of the film, we hear the chalk on the chalk board. Another normal day in Nade’s routine life; but this day begins with an incident that changes her life.
Someone in the room has stolen a purse and, indignant that a student could resort to robbing a classmate, Nade asks a student to carry out a bag search but to no avail. Since no one comes forward to confess or name names, Nade decides that each student will contribute a small amount of money to reimburse the victim. Nade makes up the deficit when one student is short, and it soon becomes apparent that Nade herself is skint.
After school Nade takes the bus to a translation agency to drop off work and collect an overdue payment. She has no choice but to accept the assurances and excuses that she has heard before. Nade goes home to her daughter and unemployed mechanic husband who might be lazy, but is a good and loving father. While Nade becomes obsessed with trapping the mystery thief at school, bailiffs come knocking. Nade discovers that her feckless husband has used their mortgage savings to buy a new engine that proves a bad deal.
The remainder of the film follows Nade’s attempts to resolve this impossible situation, with, at every turn, the filmmakers putting a new obstacle in her path in the tradition of all the American action adventure movies. While awaiting the payment from the agency she borrows money from a loan shark. As in those action-adventure movies, a race-against-the-clock ensues as Nade overcomes a series of mundane obstacles, so frustrating they become humorous, on her way to meeting the payment deadline.
There is a subplot involving Nade’s estranged father who, following the death of Nade’s mother, remarried a bimbo whom Nade resents. Nade’s pride prevents her from asking her father for money and then from apologising after insulting the bimbo. These scenes show us a different, childish, highly principled and feisty side to Nade who comes across elsewhere as being passive, willing to compromise and in control of her emotions.
Margita Gosheva, the professional actress who carries the film and appears in just about every shot, is so natural, inventive and unpredictable in her reactions and expressions that she keeps you enthralled, even when the moralistic outcome becomes clear. Her character drives, takes buses, runs and then walks and walks, usually in small heals that we hear clicking along the pavement and roads as the most dominant sound effect in the film.
This is a very physical as well as a physical journey, but Nade never leaves town. This walk around town, as well as her character’s connection with a crime might bring to mind Jeanne Moreau’s famous all night walk in Louis Malle’s French New Wave classic, Lift to the Scaffold. It could be that Gosheva has the distinction of outwalking Ms Moreau.