BAD APPLES
THREE STARS A primary school teacher makes questionable decisions when faced with a particularly unruly student.
COMEDY DRAMA UK English #BADAPPLES Starring Saoirse Ranan, Eddie Waller
There's a certain delicious appeal about BAD APPLES, particularly if you've ever spent time in a classroom wondering how on earth some teachers manage to get through the day without reaching for something considerably stronger than a cup of tea. Like a base ball bat. Or worse.
Satirising both the state of education and a society no longer convinced that boundaries apply, Jonatan Etzler’s witty film has a premise with plenty of potential. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite have the stomach to follow through.
Saoirse Ronan plays Maria, a well-intentioned primary school teacher whose classroom is dominated by Danny (Eddie Waller), a particularly troublesome pupil. Her attempts to maintain order and deliver something resembling an education are repeatedly thwarted by the boy who has no interest in any of the above. With the school powerless to intervene and parental support in decidedly short supply, Maria finds herself pushed towards an unconventional solution.
After accidentally injuring Danny, Maria panics when he threatens to report her. Rather than taking him to hospital, she drives him home and locks him in the basement. What follows is a bizarre exercise in damage limitation as Maria attempts to maintain the pretence that the boy has simply disappeared while continuing her teaching duties upstairs.
The irony, of course, is that without this bad apple disrupting her classroom, the students flourish. They're happier, the school inspection is a success and Maria is finally receiving the professional recognition she's been craving. Even more bizarrely, she begins providing Danny with individual tuition, food, clothes and entertainment in his makeshift basement accommodation / jail. But there's a student in Maria's blind spot. Clingy, spurned Pauline discovers what's going on and seizes an opportunity to make her mark. Believe it or not, things get worse.
There's certainly a lot to like in the film's satirical instincts. Its absurdist premise offers a neat opportunity to take aim at society losing its moral compass, the erosion of authority and the broader failures of an education system that seems incapable of dealing with the very people it's supposed to educate. Ronan is (as always) an appealing presence, bringing a degree of credibility to a character whose circumstances become progressively more extraordinary. It's a setup that should have teachers nodding in weary recognition, if not quietly cheering from the back row.
The problem is that the film keeps pulling its punches. The humour is often too soft for the satire to really bite, while the screenplay doesn't give us quite enough to believe Maria would actually behave the way she does. For every step on the offensive, there are two that retreat into comedy and conciliation. This fence-sitting rather undoes the tension at the heart of the film, leaving it neither sufficiently outrageous nor particularly convincing.
Somewhere in this tasty confection lurks a much sharper, much more wicked apple that’s just begging to be eaten.
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