[CRITICAL] THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER

THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER, presented at Sundance in US Dramatic Competition is a moving film that evokes a subtle awakening to the art and to the beauty and the limits of education between parents and teachers.

Passionate about his work as a teacher in a kindergarten, Lisa (Maggie Gyllenhaal) teaches all the possible ways : the writing, the meaning of the words, the singing, the dancing, the painting. It was given for mission of awakening the souls of the children to the culture and the art ultra-Sensitive, she often feels at odds with the world as it is increasingly filled with stupid people. For her, it is a personal tragedy to see the iq of the individuals in the society to decrease by the way. With a certain claim, it probably thinks that it can by its action prevent this fall in intellectual and cultural. Even his teenage children are a source of disappointment : more interested in sports and friends, they read more, do more in the museums, and no longer are curious like she always is.

Because she always feels the need to discover and feel, and continues to train at the University in the following courses of poetry. This allows him to express his sensitivity because these courses give them an opportunity to read in public rather lewd poems personal, which appeal to the intimate, the soul, the heart of the human being and the beauty.

Also when it detects in the young Jamie (Parker Sevak) a talent to compose poems that she considers to be extraordinary, it is as if she awoke from a heavy and long sleep, submerged in the rituals and routine of his life without a soul. The small Jamie gives him a taste for life, turning the power of proxy of its own inner flame. The strength of THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER, inspired an israeli film, is to show subtly Lisa gradually losing its objective judgment and switching in the unreasonable. She wants at any price that the gift of the boy to be acknowledged, in spite of the refusal of the father.

The camera attaches to the no Lisa without judging, but asking about the limits that should be set mutually teachers and parents, not substitute for each other. We all had teachers that take their students to the top because they see their potential, their talents and their gifts, even their surdouement, as in Will Hunting. These are smugglers, who are not necessarily gifted themselves. Lisa is not fooled herself, she knows that she is not an artist.

“THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER is a heartbreaking interlude in the life of a woman at the crossroads.”

The filmmaker Sara Colangelo manages to embark the viewer empathetic on false trails, for the lose and the doubts. Because of the special relationship that Lisa moves in with the 5 year old boy takes a form of dependency sometimes unhealthy. The decisions that it takes, while thinking to act for the better and to preserve its sensitivity, also put Jamie in danger, which recalls in some ways the father with his children from Captain Fantastic. But the downfall of the film is worth the effort because it is proof in the eyes of all of the intelligence and of the ultrasensibilité effective of the little boy.

The casting is perfect, with Maggie Gyllenhaal fascinating of accuracy and truth and the little actor extraordinaire ! Despite the cliché of clothing antiquated which is decked out Lisa, supposed to symbolize the teacher to be more interested in the spirit than by the image that it returns, THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER is a heartbreaking interlude in the life of a woman at a crossroads.

Sylvie-Noelle

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