TMS Movie Review: The Teachers' Lounge
(Sony Pictures)
With all the controversy over France missing out on the Best Foreign Language Picture category at the Oscars this year, the official five nominated films have been somewhat neglected in the process. One of the international features honored is Ilker Çatak’s The Teachers’ Lounge from Germany. A film with a simple plot, some intense direction and a very strong performance by female lead Leonie Benesch. While we seem to currently be in a slump with new releases, it’s a good time to catch up on some of the more recent foreign options out now.
In modern day Hamburg, Carla Nowak (Benesch) is a teacher at a public middle school currently dealing with discreet robberies occurring across the campus. Beginning with basic school supplies, the staff decide to directly confront various students about the theft when money from wallets begins to disappear. After Carla secretly places a hidden camera in her usual spot in the faculty lounge, she thinks she’s resolved the issue with proof—until it very quickly backfires on her.
(Sony Pictures)
Eva Löbau co-stars as the school’s front desk lady and biggest suspect, Michael Klammer, Anne-Kathrin Gummich and Sarah Bauerett play fellow faculty members, and Leonard Stettnisch, Vincent Stachowiak and Can Rodenbostel are a few troublesome students. Çatak co-wrote the script with Johannes Duncker, and Marvin Miller provides an effectively traditional music score. Similar to Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall, The Teachers’ Lounge is a little silly plot wise, but the execution is so good and distracting it makes up for the impracticalness of the characters’ decisions. Benesch, who broke through over a decade as a teenager in Michael Haneke’s acclaimed The White Ribbon (2009) and has had roles on popular TV series like Netflix’s “The Crown” (2017-19) and Sky 1’s “Babylon Berlin” (2017-2020), effortlessly carries the film as every scene revolves around Carla. We believably see the concerned and caring schoolteacher go from pacifist who doesn’t believe in interrogating the students with serious accusations; to overwhelmed and exasperated when she’s reminded how relentless her colleagues can be and how much smarter the kids she took for granted are. Along with some tight editing and some great child actor performances in a year that already had some impressive dramatic acting from minors, The Teachers’ Lounge is an adrenaline rush that made me glad I don’t have to deal with school anymore.