LFF Day 1 - Frankenweenie, Normal School

#2 - Normal School

rating: 2.5

Celina Murga makes her third trip to the London Film Festival (after Ana and the Others and A Week Alone in 2003 and 2008 respectively) with Normal School, a beguiling if disappointingly disjointed documentary which aims to probe and dissect the high school experience, but feels malnourished and strangely quite contrived. Murga treks to the state school she attended in the city of Parana, seeking to examine the various machinations that both drive and hinder the successful operation of an education system, but comes up only half-full. Murga's handheld, low-fi photography is part and parcel of the verite format, and though some convenient camera placement suggests, at worst, some doctored scenes, and at best, some sly camera staging and manipulative editing, the strong, unquestionably naturalistic banter between the students does support Murga's claim to authenticity. The film fleets between a number of tacitly related glimpses of the school; teachers, for instance, are shown performing banal tasks such as refilling hand-wash dispensers rather than getting on with teaching, and are frequently saddled with taxing dilemmas, such as whether to set their pupils absurdly high targets, or low ones that are surely only going to be self-fulfilling. While making a clear, if fumbled, effort to penetrate the social stratum of high school, Murga almost entirely avoids the opportunity to probe into staff room politics, which is nothing if not a gigantic missed opportunity. As far as the students go, we're provided with a glimpse at a range of different cliques; the driven, political ones - who argue passionately about the interplay of politics and religion, and in a memorable static shot, one student debate the merits of a book report - and the more immature groups, who pass the time building water balloons, much to the chagrin of the school's staff. The focus on student politics and sit-in protests does regrettably veer close to self-parody at times - as anyone who has observed student politics will attest to - while indiscriminate editing fails to elicit the inherent self-importance of these pursuits in a way that seems even remotely aware of itself. Though it seems authentic, that doesn't stop it from being a bit tedious. There are compelling threads throughout, yet Murga keeps them diffuse and disparate, failing to incorporate each into a meaningful critique of Argentina's school system that more judicious juxtaposition surely would have provided. Check back tomorrow when we'll have a shedload more reviews, for big-hitters like Amour, End of Watch, Room 237, The Hunt, Robot and Frank, and many more.