The Teacher’s Lounge Review: Group Mentality Pervades in Suspenseful School Drama

Whatever the issue—conformity, abuse of authority, and so forth—limiting a film’s action to a school filled with hormone-addled children and beleaguered civil servants, all abiding by at times inscrutable codes of conduct, can have an amplifying effect. But while Ilker Çatak’s The Teacher’s Lounge makes full use of the dramatic possibilities inherent in its setting, it doesn’t exceed its remit by turning the story into a referendum on society.

The story begins in a German junior high school already unsettled by accusations of theft. Carla (Leonie Benesch), a seventh-grade teacher, is pulled into a tense conference with other staff and two student government representatives. Throughout, the well-intentioned Carla acts like a public defense attorney, reminding the squirming children that they don’t need to answer which of their classmates may be the thief. At the same time, her counterproductively vehement colleagues press ahead like they’re detectives trying to break down a reluctant witness.

In short order, this issue morphs into multiple overlapping crises. After one of Carla’s students is accused (unfairly, she believes) of the theft, she sets up a sting in the teacher’s lounge: She leaves her wallet in her jacket, turns on her laptop camera, and walks off. Returning to discover money missing, Carla reluctantly identifies the school secretary, Ms. Kuhn (Eva Löbau), since her shirt matches the one that the apparent thief was wearing on the video captured by the laptop. In the first of many unforeseen consequences resulting from Carla’s actions that keep notching the film into higher registers of anxiety, this accusation turns one of Carla’s favorite students, Oskar (Leonard Stettnisch), against her because Ms. Kuhn is his mother.

From that point, one wrinkle after another—a student caught cheating, angry parents, dissension among the staff, and Oskar’s dark-sounding threats of “consequences”—turn Carla’s once-orderly classroom and then the entire school into a free-fire zone of rumor, innuendo, and recrimination. Throughout, Çatak keeps The Teacher’s Lounge on medium-to-high boil through its quick-moving runtime. He treats the dramatic developments with full emotional earnestness but without overplaying their importance. At no point do we think that we’re meant to be watching something akin to Law & Order: Junior High. There are even moments when the film pokes fun at some characters’ self-seriousness, such as when the staff of the student newspaper treats a gotcha interview with Carla as the equivalent of the Watergate break-in.

At the center of this chaos is Carla, still idealistic but more and more isolated. The screenplay, by Çatak and Johannes Duncker, shows the thirtysomething teacher repeatedly trying to do the right thing but often not realizing how her actions will be perceived. Initially this impetuousness can be put off on her high-octane idealism. But one neatly delivered line makes clear why she stands up for the more isolated students like Oskar: Talking with fellow staff member Dudek (Rafael Stachowiak), she asks him not to speak to her in Polish at school, not wanting to remind people that she’s foreign-born. The irony of the film is that by pushing back against the group mentality of students or staff, Carla ends up drawing even more attention to her outsider status.

The Teacher’s Lounge largely rests on the shoulders of Benesch, who nearly vibrates with an intensity that stops just short of self-martyrdom. But despite presenting Carla as more well-intentioned than almost any of the other adults, who largely appear as venal and petty and panicky as the students, this surprisingly suspenseful film doesn’t treat her as a hero. While the somewhat truncated conclusion provides few clear answers, it makes clear that regardless of Carla’s genuinely caring nature, being rewarded for it rather than punished isn’t a given.