The gentle touch

OK, no funny business this week. Just a straightforward review. No interrogative techniques. No verse. No sky-writing. I don’t have the time. Or the energy. I have a life. It’s quite a crappy one, full of ennui — who are these people who say there aren’t enough hours in the day? There are far too many! — but if I don’t attend to it, who will? (If you leave ennui to its own devices, it will take over your gutters, and then fur up your pipes, and, if it doesn’t get into the brickwork, you’re lucky.) So let’s get on with it, and on to Monsieur Lazhar, which was nominated in the best foreign category at the Oscars — it lost out to the Iranian film A Separation, which I trust you have seen, or there truly is no hope for you — and is what I would call a Tinkling Piano Film.

A Tinkling Piano Film is one of those quiet, delicate films in which not much happens bar, perhaps, a single incident, and from then on it is an exploration of all the reverberations, as a piano tinkles tinklingly in the background. The Tinkling Piano Film is related to, but distinct from, a Mournful Cello Film, which is much more depressing, and can make you want to throw yourself under a train. (In my experience, western European cinema tends to specialise in Tinkling Piano Films whereas eastern Europeans, particularly the Russians, tend to be more into Mournful Cello Films, as well as bad knitwear.) Whatever, this Tinkling Piano Film is quite the thing: thoughtful, intelligent, elegant, touching, warm and with some splendid dashes of humour. It almost made me forget myself, which is weird, as well as something of a novelty.

Written and directed by Philippe Falardeau, this is a French–Canadian production set in Montréal, and it begins with that single event which, in this instance, is absolutely shocking; a young boy, Simon, opens the door to his primary school classroom and sees that his beloved teacher has hanged herself (tinkling piano; tinkling piano).