Le film au secours du corps de l’adolescent en milieu scolaire : rythmes individuels, rythmes collectifs

Abstract

Summarising F. Testu’s research on the issue of school rhythms, R. Sue and M.-F. Caccia explain that we are “confronted with two rhythms: one ‘environmental’, imposed by the adult; the other ‘endogenous’, specific to the pupils”. The first difficulty for schools is to impose the same timetable on all children and adolescents in order to accommodate and allow for the development of each individual. In addition, the school day is divided into learning periods and breaks, where pupils strike a delicate balance between constraints (teaching) and moments of fulfilment (those of “youthful life, the loves and friendships that unfold”). According to a number of education researchers, this fragmentation of the day does not meet the imperatives of “global, interrelated, not fragmented or compartmentalized” educational time.It seems to us that this tension between a fragmented school rhythm and the individual, non-compartmentalised construction of adolescence motivates the subject matter of several films. In Entre les murs (L. Cantet, 2008), for example, the camera takes the time to linger on each body in a collective learning situation, while at the same time blurring the boundaries between the classroom and the outside world. In addition, Elephant (G. Van Sant, 2003) offers each teenager filmed the opportunity to escape both the rhythm of school (endless wandering through the corridors of a high school) and the stereotypes of the teen-movie with which each is a priori associated (the jock, the artist, the outcast, etc.). We propose to understand precisely how these two films, principally, construct an individualised representation of teenage bodies, at a time when they are subjected to an 'environmental' rhythm that does not precisely, a priori, respond to educational issues.

Keywords

• film aesthetics
• school rhythm
• teenage bodies