The Class

(Laurent Cantet)

François Bégaudeau, Franck Keita, Nassim Amrabt, Esmerelda Ouertani, Laura Baquela

Running time: 128 minutes (12A)

Rating: 5/5

Escapism at the movies has never felt so real. In the triumphant, swooning fantasy, Slumdog Millionaire, you can almost smell the stench among the mountains of Bombay trash which serve as home for Jamal and Salim. Danny Boyle's camera, always restless and nosing, steels his Dickensian fantasy with the hard edge of poverty. It stirs our sympathy for these kids even more.

American movie-making prides itself on escapism but has for years been gravitating ever closer to real life. Think of last year's docu-horror Cloverfield, which whooshed us towards the ground in a helicopter crash. Your stomach turned inside out; your body shuddered on impact. In Jonathan Demme's recent American drama, the Altmanesque Rachel Getting Married, he took us to a wedding and left us to roam around. You knew what it felt like to be there. Realism, it turns out, is the new escapism.

Since the Italian neorealists shook the movies up in the 1940s by using real locations and non-actors, many filmmakers have relied on realism to create intimacy and, with it, to shine light on a greater kind of truth about life. But the mainstream is filching their thunder. Perhaps in response, French directors are pushing those boundaries of neorealism while keeping their eye on narrative force.

In last year's Couscous, director Abdel Kerchice crafted the kind of film that pokes its nose in during dinner, only to stay and forget the plot was working invisibly around you. And now there's Laurent Cantet's nourishing, Palme D'Or-winning film, The Class.

It's beautifully complex yet beguilingly simple. We spend a year in a tough Parisian classroom and it is so naturalistic, you wonder if you are watching a documentary. You don't notice there is even a plot until you find your feelings all caught up in it. You could call it extreme-realism.

The Class opens in a café with Mr Marin (Francois Bégaudeau, playing himself from his own semi-autobiographical novel). He slugs an espresso though you suspect whiskey would be more appropriate. He teaches French in a tough Parisian school with a multicultural medley of students. The faces are African, Asian and European. Each day fills up with the din of clashing identities. But Marin – young, balding with a distinctive Gallic nose – takes a progressive approach.

The kids are rowdy and surly. You think, perhaps, he lacks control. Yet he works them in subtle ways. While other teachers prefer discipline, he gives the children room to earn respect. They question everything. He questions their assumptions with Socratic patience, gently leading them to self-awareness and understanding. Unlike the other teachers, he doesn't want to tame them, even though they kick at student-teacher boundaries.

One slippery and troubled youngster called Souleymane (Franck Keita) makes an inquiry: "People say you like men". It's the kind of moment that could destroy a career. Marin smiles. "Why do you ask?" he says. The kid fires back: "Homosexuality isn't an insult, sir."

One teacher has a breakdown. To survive, Marin displays the quick thinking of a fire fighter, yet the nurturing instincts of a gardener. But the openness of his approach has its limits too. An incident involving a quarrelsome girl snowballs into a serious problem. At one point, the camera pulls back and we watch Marin swamped by kids in the schoolyard. He has lost control.

The Class is not the kind of film that throws cheap shots. Marin doesn't inspire his students to stand on their desks reciting Walt Whitman's 'O Captain! My Captain!' It wants instead to understand rather than inspire.

Cantet imbues the film with the gentle inquisitiveness of a parent. His approach allows you to feel like a class inspector; instead of sitting at the back, though, the handheld cameras roam the room, exploring the confused, anxious faces.

Through delicate exchanges, Cantet crafts a warm, stirring snapshot of the future. For underneath the drama is an engorging debate. He is asking explicit questions about secular France and who we are as Europeans within a tidal wave of conflicting identities. In a sense, Marin and his class become a prism of society and its governance. Where do you draw the line between compassion and destructive behaviour if you are a liberal? How can you understand people who are too caught up in their own problems to understand you?

The title of the film in France is Entre les Murs (between the walls) and seems more apt. It has so much in common with Nicholas Philibert's beloved 2002 documentary Être et Avoir about a year in a provincial school. The Class has a similar texture, with engaging characters and subtle yet profound revelations. It reverberates with real life but it's entirely a construct. A great achievement.