Toronto film festival: The four-time Oscar nominee is as strong as ever playing a teacher in a shocking situation, but the film can’t quite rise to her level
T
hough criminally underpaid and disrespected, teachers are nonetheless held to rigidly high standards of care, compassion and rectitude. They are to be exemplary stewards of our children, while unflinchingly enduring the battering of parents, administrators and outside agitators. Which is why it’s often so compelling, in a dark and squirmy way, to watch them break bad on film.
We have, of course, seen plenty of ill-advised (or illegal) sexual relationships between teacher and student, in myriad movies and TV programs. Beyond that hoary trope, though, we’ve observed with alarm the drug-addled overstepping of Ryan Gosling in Half Nelson; we’ve been guiltily thrilled by the obsessive opportunism of The Kindergarten Teacher; we’ve pried nosily into the shifty criminality of Hugh Jackman in Bad Education. These stories all present a grimly alluring vision: carefully maintained professionalism giving way to baser impulse.
Now joining that club is Saoirse Ronan in Bad Apples, an alternately sinister and silly drama about a teacher who takes radical action to deal with a problem student. Ronan is Maria, a lonely and jilted educator living in a drably anonymous corner of the United Kingdom (the film was shot in Bristol). Whatever passion and zeal she once had – that trumpet-blare of higher calling – has faded in the face of an impossible obstacle. A boy, violent and disruptive tween Danny (Eddie Waller), essentially prevents Maria from focusing on any other child in her class. Her job has been reduced to little more than crowd control, which her superiors think she ought to do without assistance or complaint.
