Classe de Neige aka Class Trip, written (with others) and directed by Claude Miller

Classe de Neige aka Class Trip, written (with others) and directed by Claude Miller

A different version of this note and thoughts on other books are available at:

-              https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEVa4_CsRStSBBDo4uJWT8BSWtTTn0N1E and   http://realini.blogspot.ro/

From the very start, this film made me think of my own experience.

Therefore, there is a spoiler alert:

-          Not that I divulge what goes on or happens at the end!

-          On the contrary, given that the film did not really fascinate me, this note is less, or not at all about what happens within, but the thoughts generated by the Moving Pictures…

The first words and images are striking for me.

In front of a blackboard – which is actually a green board- a teacher explains…

The students are going on a Classe de Neige.

The very name is outré.

-          It means a “class in the snow, if not of snow”

And yes, there are activities in the neige.

But I still find it awkward.

The teacher in the films says:

-          Deux pyjamas aka two pajamas

-          Sun glasses = lunettes de soleil

-          Trois tee shirts- they did use some English words, didn’t they

And this is exactly what I heard when my own child went on Classe de Neige.

Because she is a student at the Grand Lycee Francais…

The next scene is also strikingly familiar:

-          A parent is worried of the lack of communication between family and children, while they are on this class trip-

-          By the way, this trip takes about a week

Then the concerned father continues:

-          There has been an accident that we have all seen at the news

-          Yes

-          Who guarantees that this will not happen again?

-          Nobody can…the child can go outside and a tree could fall…

So the father takes the son along in the car, to avoid the fate of those on the bus where the driver has fallen asleep.

The worry is that the boy will be seen as a pariah.

Which is again my worry, even if from a different perspective, of a conflict I have been in with the French high school.

Their system is wrong in my view and I will just mention a couple of examples where I think they reach absurd extremes.

First, in the parking lot of the establishment, hundreds of cars wait at the hour of school exit and most of them keep engines running, even when it is spring or autumn and the temperatures are pleasant outside and the cars are not moving, but only polluting the atmosphere to maintain 22 degrees, which could be obtained just by opening the windows.

And yet the high school that is offering classes on protecting the environment has taken no position on the matter, indeed it either does not notice, or even more serious, does not care about an important issue:

-          Climate Change is after all the subject of an important Paris agreement that the silly Donald was so much criticized for abandoning

At the same time, I had trouble entering with the bike that I ride, in the same educational Mecca that does not appreciate this means of –green- transportation.

Returning for the final comments on the movie- on which after all I was supposed to note- there is a strange mix within.

The boy has strange cauchemars aka nightmares that are difficult for this reader to distinguish from reality.

In the sense that my own bad and real dreams, experiences and clashes with the French Institution are projected on the screen.

From a different perspective, but still haunting enough.