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