I previously watched director and cowriter Mark Jackson's
_War Story_ on DVD. That film is about a war photographer
(Catherine Keener) and her experience in the Middle East.
_This Teacher_ is an inversion of that journey, with a
young French-Arabic woman (Hafsia Herzi) journeying to
New York, visiting and falling out with her former friend
also from Paris, and escaping to a cabin in the rural part
of the state. This is a tiny independent film and is meant
for a "liberal" audience. So I applaud the nuanced depiction
of the liberal people in New York City who try to be decent
and "woke" but end up talking down to Hafsia's character (also
called Hafsia) about Afghan women. They are clearly clueless,
living in their media-inflated bubble: she is a Parisian and
has nothing to with Afghanistan. They should have *listened*
to what she has to say, and might then learn something about
another culture. (The recent outcry against violence against
"Asians" has a similar vibe -- there is no country called
"Asia," different Asian cultures and nationalities are very
different from and often hostile to one another, and
judging/overgeneralizing others by their skin colors and
appearances was precisely what used to be called "racism.")

In the cabin, she befriends a cop and his wife from Texas who
are generous to her. But a drunken row about Islam leads to
physical violence. Still, they leave her a farewell note and
apologize; unlike a lot of films that just tries to divide us,
_This Teacher_ acknowledges the fundamental decency and generosity
of Americans even as it criticizes their (our, everyone's)
failings. The problem with the film is that it doesn't give
Hafsia much of a backstory. She is almost schizophrenic. In
the end, it seems the director does not listen to his protagonist,
either! Mark Jackson's first film won a bunch of awards, including
some for its main actress (I haven't seen it). His next two films
star two excellent, excellent, veteran actresses (Herzi is the
reason I streamed this video). While he got recognized for these
films, they didn't, and probably shouldn't have been. The scripts and
the writing of their characters are just not great. This is the writers/director's failing. In art-house films like this, where
everything hangs on the protagonist's every word, there is just
no excuse for this. You have to do better by your actresses. I
hope he does that in the future and realizes his full potential.
Lucy Walters is very good though, as she is in the otherwise
horrible _Entangled_, even if her Texas accent isn't convincing.

---------------------------

One wishes that _This Teacher_ has a proper prequel like _You Deserve
a Lover_ to flesh out Hafsia's character before plunging into her
apparent breakdown, so she is more than just the sum of her breakdown.

_You Deserve a Lover_ is a very, very nice work directed, written by,
and starring Hafsia Herzi. The film is a charming, episodic meditation
on the life, love, and boyfriend troubles of a French-Arabic woman. It
has such a beautiful rhythm to it; the switching between different tones
and visual styles in different scenes is done so well and it must be
much harder to pull off than it appears. Many of the early scenes use
hand-held camera and have a free-form, documentary feel that reminds
me of Abdel Kechiche's films (Kechiche is acknowledged in the credits,
and of course Herzi's breakthrough as an actress came in his _Secret of
the Grain_). The overlapping dialogues in these group scenes are often hilarious. (The love-shaman and the protagonist's gay sidekick are
particularly amazing.) But the later scenes become more static, pensive,
and poetic. The choice of a wide screen aspect ratio is strange for such
an intimate film, but it comes out just right and prevents it from being
too egocentric. The lighting is beautiful and the ending -- which I won't
spoil but it hinges on a poem -- is just about pitch perfect. It is *so* refreshing to see a film with a mostly French-Arabic cast that has nothing
to do with Islam, terrorism, or drug dealing. It is perhaps the ultimate romantic comedy for those who hate the genre.

And once again I am impressed by the assured work directed by French
actresses trying their hand at directing. The only clear misses I've
seen are Sara Forestier's _M_, about a stuttering and bullied girl
starring herself, and the films of Mia Hansen-Love, which are uniformly mediocre and meandering, except _Eden_ which is so bad (and shows so
poor taste in music) it should disqualify her as director all by itself.

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