L'École buissonnière

Passion for Life begins with a new teacher coming to a rural village. This teacher, Pascal, is fresh from college, eager, and with new ideas about how school should be taught. For one, he does not like sitting on a raised platform above the students. For another, he distrusts rote memorization. Finally, he wants the students to develop a passion for learning and to always be curious. These beliefs put Pascal at odds with the village leaders, the old teacher Pascal is replacing, and, at first, the old teacher's daughter.

I saw Passion for Life at a summer college film series. None of the audience members knew anything about the film. They ended up being very pleased with the film. It is a hard one to dislike. Passion for Life is a light, pro-student, pro-education film that runs only 90 minutes. This is classical French filmmaking, pre-New Wave, when the emphasis was on rustic characters.

I am not often taken by sentimental films, but I like this one. True, it offers few surprises and the script is not overly risky. However, the film succeeds at everything it wants to do. I was also pleased to see that the climatic speech was given by one of the students instead of the teacher. Passion for Life deserves to be better known in the United States.