By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 5 cats
Director: Sébastien Marnier
Starring: Emmanuelle Bercot | Laurent Lafitte | Luàna Bajrami | Pascal Greggory | Victor Bonnel
Original language title: L'heure de la sortie
Country: france
Year: 2018
Running time: 104
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7175992/reference
Thom says: “Director Marnier has made only one previous unseen feature FAULTLESS (2016) so I had no idea what to expect here & I was enthralled with this dark surprise. The film largely takes place within the confines of a rural high school. In the very first scene (not really counts as a spoiler) the professor of a class of the school’s elite students gets up on a chair and throws himself out of a 4th floor window, as the students then rush to the window to see the splatter on the ground. A replacement teacher is soon brought in and he is met without extreme hostility by the class, especially by by the class Secret Six (2 girls & 4 boys) who turn out to be almost feral. That the male teacher (Pierre) (a subtle Laurent Lafitte, you loved him in ELLE) is gay is almost an afterthought as it never comes into play, except perhaps psychologically. The other academicians at the school are almost as odd as the Secret Six. Pierre, while desperately trying to reign in the seemingly wicked six, becomes downright obsessed with them, to the point of following them to their illicit rendezvous’ where they go through their brutal, violent rituals. As the film gets stranger & stranger I was continually drawn into the story, almost expecting the very ambiguous ending. I can see many people not wanting to get involved with the sordid theme, but I was drawn in maybe because I feel like a prisoner, of sorts. Great ensemble cast sells the bizarre script. 5 cats“