The Teachers’ Lounge

Grade: B

We never see our heroine of The Teachers’ Lounge at home, and we know nothing about her personal life. It all takes place at the school. That feels right, and gives everything a certain claustrophobic intensity. The score goes a long way to set the tone. Most of the music we hear is the same theme in one note, jumping up and down the octave in the key of A. It made me think of incidental music that signifies time passing. It has the ticking rhythm of the second hand on a clock.

A fun thing about watching a foreign language movie is you’re bound to finish reading a subtitle faster than the characters talk, so you’ll get a big punchline or payoff before they do. The Teachers’ Lounge is in German – a beautiful language. Ich liebe es. 32-year-old actress Leonie Benesch (Princess Cecile from The Crown) is effective as Carla Nowak, a teacher at a secondary school. Theft – or paranoia of such – begins to run rampant starting with a student who is discovered to have an unusual amount of money in his wallet. Turns out his parents gave him the money so he could buy a video game. Cool. That’s put to bed then, right?

Ms. Nowak leaves her laptop open in the teachers’ lounge, with video secretly recording, in case anything happens to her belongings while she steps away for a little while. I wondered why she wouldn’t just keep her valuables with her, but this is a movie that lets its characters be imperfect, and do things that are questionable. She returns to find some cash missing from her wallet. The video shows a white blouse with a very specific star pattern, worn by somebody rummaging into Ms. Nowak’s coat pocket. An administrator in the office right outside the lounge is wearing a blouse that exactly matches the one in the video.

This sounds like a slam-dunk case, but it’s tricky, because there’s a law about recording without someone else’s knowledge, and she broke that. Regardless, the staffer Carla accuses (who denies it – “that could be anyone’s shirt”) gets put on a leave of absence. She has a son in Carla’s class. The rumor mill spreads like wildfire, and Ms. Nowak is smeared by the student body – with interview quotes printed in the school newspaper, twisted and taken out of context.

I was amazed at how little control she has over her class. She lets them walk all over her; the alleged thief’s son threatens Carla and gets a little physical. The other adults at the school seem helpless. As hard as she tries to keep matters between the involved parties, the parents at the council meetings are interested in the complete gossipy scoop, and press her for details. The film is blown up to a nightmare scenario, but is an intriguing, involving story that raises questions about ethics and the like.

By the end, there’s so much we don’t find out. In Anatomy of a Fall, which was also open-ended, that felt like an artistic choice. Here, it comes across as unfinished. But what we do see is a compelling workplace thriller, that will get viewers talking. It’s Germany’s submission for a potential Best International Film Oscar. I hope you see it.

Grade: B