Class Trip

France 1998

Reviewed by Charlotte O'Sullivan

Synopsis

Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.

Young Nicolas is set to go on a school journey. His overprotective, travelling-salesman father drives him to the ski chalet in his grey Renault. He forgets to unload Nicolas' suitcase. As a result, Nicolas has no warm clothes and must sleep without pyjamas. His teacher Miss Grimm tries to contact Nicolas' father but he hasn't returned home, so another teacher, Patrick, takes Nicolas shopping. Meanwhile, the class bully Hodkann becomes fascinated by Nicolas.

Plagued by nightmares, Nicolas becomes ill. While convalescing, he hears two policemen talking about a boy's disappearance. Lying, Nicolas tells Hodkann the boy has been kidnapped by organ traffickers, as was his younger brother, and that his vengeful father is on the trail. The class learns that the missing boy has been found dead. The police visit the chalet. Having overheard them talking about a grey Renault, Hodkann - fearing for Nicolas' father - tells the police to look out for the car. Nicolas' father is arrested in connection with the boy's death. He really is the killer.

Review

Class Trip, like the recent films Ponette and The Butcher Boy, is concerned with rummaging inside the head of an emotionally damaged child. As with Ponette and The Butcher Boy's Francie, Class Trip's Nicolas' imagination is nightmarishly active (reality, memory and television-fed fantasy bleed so heavily into one another they're often impossible to tell apart). Like Ponette and Francie, Nicolas is socially isolated, both younger and older than his peers (he doesn't get 'dirty' jokes yet his dreams come complete with an opera soundtrack). And again like those characters, his relationship to nature is extremely vivid. (A sleep-walking Nicolas pads out into freshly falling snow; watching the mauve half-light you find your own skin tingling.) What marks him out is his timidity. Pugnacious, charismatically defiant children are easier to grasp hold of, as Claude Miller's own L'Effrontée showed. A lot rests on Clément Van Den Bergh's hunched little shoulders, but he bears up wonderfully.

The script is often impressive as well. Adapted with Emmanuel Carrère's help from his own novel, it's full of references to the incomplete or dismemberable body. On two occasions we see a body in all its fibrous, under-the-skin glory, all its components ready to detach. Nicolas' father, meanwhile, lives in fear of organ traffickers and, according to his son, sells plastic limbs. When Nicolas' schoolmate Hodkann asks excitedly what it feels like to have a false limb on, Nicolas tells him gravely that those with real ones can never know. It would seem that here the desirable body isn't whole. This chimes with a later, marvellously charged scene in which Nicolas tells his teacher the story of 'The Little Mermaid'. His version makes the mermaid sound as gleefully perverse and fetishistic as a voluntary amputee - a creature rejecting her scaly tail for the delights of new sensation "down below".

Everything comes together, as it were, in Nicolas' feverish dreams. The satisfaction of his desires brings him closer to a dreaded emission. His ritual checking of the sheets becomes nerve-wracking. As viewers we anticipate social 'death' if he wets the bed and collude with his waking self in hoping his body will not find release. But Miller is playing with us - when Nicolas finally wets the bed (with semen rather than urine - even more humiliating) nothing happens. The children don't find out, no teasing follows. Our own fear and loathing has been exposed. Like Nicolas and his father, we have come to view the natural body as more treacherous than it really is.

So far so subtle. Miller has more trouble, however, dealing with the shadowy but crucially important figure of Nicolas' father. François Roy is superb in the part, his expressions a fluid landscape of malice and terror. But his lines are crude and Guillaume Schiffman's camerawork just won't let him be, always zooming in on his hands when he touches Nicolas. The sinister music also gets cranked up whenever papa appears. Miller has spent a whole career trying to combine psychological sophistication with macabre suspense, but on this occasion his lack of faith in the audience proves fatal. When Nicolas is moved to the sick bay, and the noose around the psychopath begins to tighten, he becomes a far more conventional creature: piteous, winsome even. At the same time, Miller shifts the focus towards supporting characters, such as the teacher Miss Grimm and Hodkann, but it's too late for us to be interested in them and their utterly predictable reactions. Hodkann sneaks off to the police like any keen member of Enid Blyton's Famous Five; Miss Grimm is horrified by the murder of the young boy and lashes out at the class. This is all more cosy for the viewer of course - it positions us with the norm - but it also deprives us of tension. Class Trip gets us sticky-wet, and then cleans all up the mess. A nice dream, perhaps, but ultimately inadequate drama.

Credits

Producer
Annie Miller
Screenplay/Dialogue
Claude Miller
Emmanuel Carrère
Based on the novel by
Emmanuel Carrère
Director of Photography
Guillaume Schiffman
Editor
Anne Lafarge
Production Designer
Jean-Pierre Kohut-Svelko
Music
Henri Texier
©Les Films de la Boissière/P.E.C.F./France 3 Cinéma/Rhône-Alpes Cinéma
Production Companies
Annie Miller/Les Films de la Boissière presents
a co-production: Films de la Boissière/P.E.C.F./;France 3 Cinéma/Rhône-Alpes Cinéma
With the support/;participation of Centre National de la Cinématographie
With the participation ;of Canal +/Région Rhône-Alpes
Associate Producers
P.E.C.F. (Paris)
Francis Boespflug
Production Manager
Sylvestre Guarino
Unit Production Manager
Samuel Amar
Unit Managers
Antoine Moussault
Jean-François Abbate
Assistant Directors
Christophe Marillier
Norbert Dammann
Script Supervisor
Sylvie Koechlin
Children's Casting
Marie-Christine LaFosse
Arnaud Esterez
2nd Unit/Aerial Photography
Franck Séchan
Digital Effects
Le S.P.E.C.T.R.E.
Digital Effects Supervisor:
François Vagnon
Digital Compositor:
Arnaud Fouquet
Motion Control
Excalibur
Yves Pupulin
Thierry Lebigre
Benoît Morvan
Snow Effects
A.T.V.
Video Sequences Editor
Nicolas Le Du
Set Decorator
Bernadette Saint-Loubert
Costume Designer
Jacqueline Bouchard
Key Make-up
Lucia Bretones-Mendez
Make-up
Stéphanie Lemaire
Special Effects Make-up
Atelier Benoît Lestang
Titles/Opticals
Excalibur
Alain Le Roy
Additional Music
Philippe Heissler
Nathan Miller
Hubert Persat
Soundtrack
"Laguna veneta", "Jeudi", "Indians", "Samedi soir", "Don't Buy Ivory Anymore", "Dimanche soir", "Laguna laita", "Lundi" by Henri Texier; "Mashala" by Bojan Zulfikarpasic; "La salsa du démon" by Jacques Delaporte, Xavier Thibault, performed by Le Grand Orchestre du Splendid; "King Kong Five" by S. Casariego, A. Chao, J.M. Chao, O. Dahan, T. Darnal, P. Gauthe, D. Jamet, P. Teboul, performed by Mano Negra; "Petite messe solennelle" by Gioacchino Rossini, performed by L'Ensemble Vocal de Lausanne; "So Tell the Girls That I'm Back in Town" by Jay Jay Johansson
Production Sound Mixer
Paul Lainé
Sound Re-recording
Gérard Lamps
Sound Editor
Clémence Lafarge
Sound Effects
Philippe Heissler
Nathan Miller
Hubert Persat
Jean-Pierre Lelong
Recording
Stéphane Thiebault
Post-synchronization
Jacques Lévy
Armourers
Maratier
Jean-Claude Lecoq
Cast
Clément Van Den Bergh
Nicolas
Lokman Nalcakan
Hodkann
François Roy
the father
Yves Verhoeven
Patrick
Emmanuelle Bercot
Miss Grimm
Tina Sportolaro
the mother
Yves Jacques
the visitor
Chantal Banlier
Marie-Ange
Benoît Herlin
Ribotton
Julien Le Mouel
Lucas
Tom Jacon
the little brother
Loïc Pichon
Thierry Redler
gendarmes
Jean-Claude Frissung
the doctor
Alain Payen
accident gendarme
Guy Jacques
man in jeans
Valérie Bettencourt
station cashier
Anthéa Sogno
clothing shop cashier
Cécile Simeone
the stranger
Antoine Moussault
Sabrina Serusier
bistro owners
Marie-Sophie Baud
Pascaline Bron
Sylvain Bouvet
Romuald Coppel
Estelle Deffert
Maxime Deront
Raphaël Dubois
Julie Feuillette
Sébastien Gobinot
Constance Jacquin
Clément Lamotte
David Lanvers
Christelle Lizzi
Dimitri Lizzi
Daniel Martin
Hodan Moussa Galeb
Elise Muffat
Marion Mugnier
Guillaume Nanjoud
Pierre Olivier
Geoffrey Pais
Mélanie Pelleix
Anaïs Perfetti
Joffrey Pernollet
Jean-Marie Premat
François-Xavier Seeuws
Sandrine Vernay
Morgane Lermuzeaux
Sophie Nerot
Mélanie Vacossin
classmates
Certificate
15
Distributor
Blue Light
8,790 feet
97 minutes 40 seconds
Dolby stereo digital SR
In Colour
Anamorphic
Subtitles
Last Updated: 20 Dec 2011