Grande école (2004) – DVD

**/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras A-
starring Gregori Baquet, Jocelyn Quivrin, Arthur Jugnot, Alice Taglioni
screenplay by Robert Salis, based on the play "Editions Actes Sud Papiers" by Jean-Marie Besset
directed by Robert Salis

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover It's often interesting to watch people try to justify their actions–especially when they themselves know that what they're doing is wrong. Such is the case with Robert Salis's Grande école, a film that shortchanges class in its attempts to address sexual identity. Its saga of an upper-middle-class snob and his love for, among others, an Arab labourer, wants desperately to do the right thing as far as social levelling is concerned, but it's too impressed with its own benevolence to really serve much purpose. The main event is always its hero's conflicts, in particular his desire to remove the shackles of his upbringing–his illicit love is more a prod to his essential goodness than it is a genuine challenge to privilege. But if Grande école fails as a critique, it succeeds as a weird conflicted thing making excuses for itself.

Paul (Gregori Baquet) would appear to have it all: a comfortable home life; a loving girlfriend, Agnés (Alice Taglioni); and a bright future in the world of commerce. But as soon as he goes off to business school, he loses his faith in such certainties, first feeling compelled to stand up for Mécir (Salim Kechiouche), an Arab worker receiving a tongue-lashing from a racist foreman, then falling in love with him. Completing the schism in his mind, Paul is equally smitten with his roommate, Louis-Arnault (Jocelyn Quivrin); will he side with the manipulative son of a bourgeoisie Louis-Arnault, who's trying to seduce Agnés behind his back, or will he throw off his background and embrace the worthier Mécir?

The answer, unfortunately, is that he will waffle. Progressive though the filmmakers may seem, they're not prepared to couch Grande école in terms that decentralize the hero, meaning that Paul's comfortable milieu constantly upstages what ought to be the core relationship of the film. More time is devoted to Louis-Arnault's manipulations, flirtations with Agnés, and betrayal of his own girlfriend (Elodie Navarre) than to the supposedly better man. Furthermore, Paul's moral awakening, designed as it is to cast the lead in a good light, boomerangs on the filmmakers, with the initial defense of Mécir painfully contrived to sanctify Paul. That Mécir gets pushed to the margins tells you everything you need to know about the production, which is trying to look good without really doing good.

That being said, there are pleasures to be had from this contortionist's act. Watching the fluffy characters with their dyed-blonde hair and impeccable manners approach politics with the same understatement as they do a night on the town is curiously riveting, while the perversity of the psychosexual dynamics at play is a definite source of amusement. Couple that with the gentle stylization of the design (imagine Water Drops on Burning Rocks as rendered by a Tim Burton devotee) and you have an idea of how fascinatingly misguided are the filmmakers, who soften and colorize that which should be blunt and matter-of-fact. It's prime intellectual camp, making a grand show of its "issues" without understanding their magnitude–and you can easily have fun at its expense. One shouldn't mistake Grande école for an actual film, but trust me, the chances of that happening are close to nil, anyway.

THE DVD
Wellspring's DVD release of Grande école gets only average marks in the transfer department. The 1.85:1, 16×9-enhanced image is a trifle soft–fine detail is slightly obscured by filtering while the colours lack crisp delineations, though neither amounts to a serious nuisance. If anything, the French-language Dolby Digital 5.1 audio fares less well, as the total absence of surround cues and listless left-right separation lead one to wonder why they bothered going the multi-channel route in the first place. Still, music and voices sound reasonably robust.

On the other hand, the extras are not your average studio filler. The best of the supplements is an epic making-of featurette (52 mins.) that actually delves into more than just how the cast loved working with each other. We learn of the peccadilloes of director Robert Salis (whose policy is apparently to never speak privately about himself) and his referencing of Fassbinder and Visconti, and we hear the actors' varying perspectives on class prejudice and fluid sexual identity. Meanwhile, "Film Festival Reactions" (18 mins.) documents the journey of key cast and crew as they travel to the New York and Tokyo festivals with Grande école in tow, a moment in which playwright/screenwriter Jean-Marie Besset contrasts the NEW YORK TIMES' review of the play with that of the film an especial highlight of the piece. Ten (wisely) deleted scenes introduced by Salis, the most interesting one establishing the school's tight work schedule that leads to Mecir's initial humiliation, round out the disc along with the film's trailer and a discount offer from artfilmcollection.com.

110 minutes; NR; 1.85:1 (16×9-enhanced); French DD 5.1; CC; English (optional) subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Wellspring