August 24th, 2013 
Grace Duffy 
Film: A Teacher
Starring: Lindsay Burdge, Will Brittain
Directed by: Hannah Fidell
Tales of forbidden romance are perhaps among the most familiar – and frequent – stories committed to film. Exploring the power imbalance inherent in the illicit union between an older party and a teenage paramour provides ripe dramatic and cinematic potential, especially given its tendency to precipitate crimes of passion and unthinkable consequences. Films such as To Die For and An Education have explored taboo relationships and the impact on those involved from opposite ends of the spectrum, the former still memorable for its melodramatic depiction of a manipulative older woman and impressionable youth. A similarly impossible union forms the narrative basis of A Teacher, in which an emotionally fragile female teacher embarks on an ill-advised romance with one of her students. This sorry saga is, however, less a dramatised movie-of-the-week than a painfully realistic, cautionary portrait of desperation and loneliness.
Diana Watts (Lindsay Burdge) works as a high school teacher in a small town in Texas. She’s well-liked by her colleagues, gets on with her roommate, and enjoys her work. She’s also painfully lonely and withdrawn. What comes across as polite and endearing shyness to her co-workers masks a deeper, poisonous sense of isolation and anxiety. A tumultuous family background and dislocation in an unfamiliar place keep her emotionally distant and preoccupied, an affliction to which all around her seem oblivious. Amidst all this, she’s also made the staggeringly poor decision to take up with one of her students, the handsome and brash Eric (Will Brittain). Against an increasingly perilous backdrop, they play out a fractious relationship, Diana’s nervous demeanour escalating as she struggles to conceal her dependence on her teenage lover.
Given the well-trodden nature of this storyline, it’s not entirely A Teacher’s fault that it fails to bring anything truly arresting or original to the table. In many ways, the film is doomed by its simplicity – a short, mostly uneventful depiction of an isolated woman seeking an outlet for her discomfited emotions. Yet, the starkness and bleakness with which the story is presented also brings something of reality and emotional vulnerability to the screen. The greyscale, foggy look of the film mirrors Diana’s uncertain outlook in life, her unclear future tied to the wavering interest of a rash and capricious youth. She’s a thought-provoking if not entirely interesting character, who suffers from something of a one-note depiction. The film plays out entirely from her perspective, almost as the sequence of events does in her head. Scenes in which she interacts, usually reluctantly, with friends and colleagues are brief and insubstantial while her experiences with Eric are lengthy and indulgent. Whenever she appears alone, the scene is bookended with jarring, increasingly violent bursts of music that underline and intensify the emotional turmoil she faces within. While this is an effective narrative device in terms of conveying her isolation and insecurity, it never really lets us get under her skin. It’s unclear, for instance, whether she felt this afflicted before taking up with her student, though her girlish mannerisms around him do suggest something of a lost soul trying desperately to reclaim her disappearing youth.
This of course may be the point – the film works better as a snapshot of a particularly difficult time in a woman’s life, presenting the harrowing reality of her immediate situation as opposed to build-up and result. The precariousness of her behaviour means A Teacher is necessarily fraught in tension and incredibly bleak, something which makes for thought-provoking if not entirely satisfying viewing. Burdge carries it well, even if her permanently on-edge face becomes somewhat grating after a time, and she is ably supported by a stirring Brittain (whose confidence in the role suggests strong potential for the future). Ultimately, it may not be that the film has to be original or memorable to get under your skin – rather, it is determinedly unsettling, and in its searing, painfully everyday depiction of fragile faces and broken dreams it does leave a mark.
SCORE: B-
Review written by: Grace Duffy
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