Spatial allegories of democratic pluralism in Laurent Cantet's Entre les Murs

Abstract

Entre les Murs/The Class (Laurent Cantet 2008) is one in a long line of critically acclaimed French films to address the social and political dynamics of contemporary immigrant experience. The film's focus on a multicultural suburban high school has fuelled ongoing debates about the ability of the French public education system to accommodate the interests of the nation's diverse population. While much of the critical response to Entre les Murs has focused on its realism, this article addresses the allegorical significance of the film's primary narrative spaces - the classroom, faculty rooms and the playground - in the context of contemporary French immigra-tion policies, definitions of citizenship and mechanisms of political governance. The ambivalent representation of cultural particularism in Entre les Murs is discussed in relation to the self-legitimating ideologies of French Republicanism, while the tension in the film between individualism and institutional analysis is set against discourses of objectivity long associated with art cinema.