The Teachers’ Lounge, 2023.
Directed by Ilker Çatak.
Starring Leonie Benesch, Leonard Stettnisch, Eva Löbau, Michael Klammer, Anne-Kathrin Gummich, Kathrin Wehlisch, Sarah Bauerett, Rafael Stachowiak, Katinka Auberger, Uygar Tamer, Özgür Karadeniz, and Leo Stettnisch.
SYNOPSIS:
When one of her students is suspected of theft, teacher Carla Nowak decides to get to the bottom of the matter. Caught between her ideals and the school system, the consequences of her actions threaten to break her.
A sixth-grade student is caught cheating on a test by teacher Carla Nowak (a scintillating, layered, stressed-out performance from Leonie Benesch), prompting her to do what educators rightfully typically do: holding the child for a few minutes after class to talk about the problematic behavior with the right amount of empathy and hole-poking logic to earn a confession. She suggests to the boy that he probably wouldn’t like it if she had lied to him about something. Once Carla does something questionable herself in an attempt to deal with identifying the culprit of ongoing theft within the school, she internalizes that hypocrisy rather than face up to accountability and the consequences, with that scene playing out like a banging drum over every subsequent moment in Ilker Çatak (also serving as a co-writer alongside Johannes Duncker) relentlessly tense and profoundly sharp societal allegory, The Teachers’ Lounge.
That’s also not to say Carla is a bad person. It’s far from the contrary, as she is well-intentioned, competent, and, at the very least, aware that she might have done something wrong. Perhaps most noble, she also refuses to give up on her students even when they become troublesome and push against her version of certain events, most notably in the form of the school newspaper playing out as eerily similar to the ups and downs of real-world journalism. Her downfall is that she struggles to rectify her actions in a redeemable way, even if she tries her hardest to understand how it has affected the boy most associated with the incident at hand.
The child in question is brainiac Oscar (an impressive newcomer turned from Leonard Stettnisch, although it should be noted that every child performer here is up to the challenge of matching the outstanding adults), confused at why his secretary mom Friederike Kuhn (Eva Löbau, also outstanding, especially for accomplishing the task of selling the most important scene in the movie and one that drives much of the thought and conflict behind what is happening; the film doesn’t work without her performance) has been accused of being the thief and sacked from working at the school. Naturally, he rebels and lashes out in a variety of ways, not necessarily to disrespect Carla but to defend and protect the mother he deems innocent. As for us, it’s anyone’s guess, and that’s not the movie’s point.
Throughout the film, Carla obfuscates to the children that she labeled Friederike the thief upon setting up a hidden camera inside the titular lounge, where she may or may not have stolen some money. Whether this can be used as proof or not, it brings about other legal concerns for Carla that the school staff has decided to band together to declare a unified statement and, hopefully, make the entire issue disappear. It should also be mentioned that this is an, apart from Carla, arguably racist school staff when it comes to pinpointing who the kleptomaniac might be.
There is such a strong unshakable tension across every second of The Teachers’ Lounge with a razor-sharp script that knows what it’s doing and what it wants viewers to think about every turn as it morphs this escalating situation into a microcosm of society. When one thinks it might run out of gas early on with nowhere to go, the film finds a new pocket of the allegory to dive into, all without letting us forget that, for all the good this teacher does want to achieve, she is no better in some respects than some of her students. Even the scene where she tries forcing a confession out of Friederike contains the same speech and methodology as her approach to the students.
Smartly, the filmmakers never leave the school for a single scene, exuding confidence that pays off, knowing that they can wring suspenseful engagement from every word and dynamic introduced. This aspect is also elevated by the choice to shoot the film in the Academy ratio, eliciting a claustrophobic feel fitting for the uncertainty, surprise accusations hurled around, and the walls closing in for Carla. There is one moment that slightly jumps the shark, and the film somewhat abruptly ends once it runs out of things to say, which is also a nitpick more than anything. Otherwise, The Teachers’ Lounge is a riveting, profoundly insightful barnburner powered by a crackerjack script and phenomenal acting.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com
