Certificate: 15 (strong language). Running Time: 112 mins. UK Distributor: Sovereign Film Distribution
WHO’S IN IT?
Juan Minujín, Bárbara Lennie, Alfredo Castro, María Merlino, Lucas Arrua, Rita Cortese, Renata Lerman
WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?
Diego Lerman (director, writer, producer), María Meira, Luciana De Mello (writers), Nicolás Avruj (producer), Wojciech Staron (cinematographer), Alejandro Brodersohn (editor)
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
In Buenos Aires, a substitute teacher (Minujín) helps out one of his troubled students…
WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON THE SUBSTITUTE?
From Goodbye Mr. Chips to Dead Poets Society to even School of Rock, the “inspirational teacher” formula has generated plenty of feel-good audience favourites over the years, with a conventional but highly reliable structure that allows for some easily digestible drama that almost always leaves you feeling all warm and fuzzy. It is also a formula that Argentine filmmaker Diego Lerman clearly wants to shake up a little bit, and with his latest feature The Substitute he attempts to add a more grounded touch that’s less concerned with good vibes, and more about showing how exactly the inspirational teacher structure would work within slightly more realistic environments.
However, that alone doesn’t automatically make Lerman’s film a completely fresh new rendition, and despite its good intentions and wholly watchable nature, The Substitute is just another example of the tried-and-tested formula that simply happens to go a bit darker than some of the others.
Set in Buenos Aires, we follow Lucio (Juan Minujín), a divorced poet and critic who takes up an interim job teaching literature at a suburban high school. As you can imagine, his unruly students aren’t too interested in learning about story structure or reading poetry, but before you can say (preferably in Eric Cartman’s voice) “how do I reach these kids?”, Lucio manages to get through to them, including directionless young rebel Dylan (Lucas Arrua). Meanwhile, in his personal life, when he isn’t struggling to connect with his twelve-year-old daughter Sol (Renata Lerman), Lucio struggles with living in the shadow of his father, known better to locals as “The Chilean” (Alfredo Castro), a well-respected community man whose impending soup kitchen opening is being threatened by local gangsters. Things begin to collide when Dylan becomes involved in a drug bust at the school, forcing Lucio to step beyond his classroom boundaries and see to it that his student is protected from violent retribution.
Aesthetically, there isn’t much that’s bad about The Substitute. It is a competently made movie, with some smooth handheld cinematography that captures just about everything the viewer needs to absorb, without allowing the style to get in the way of the storytelling. Lerman is clearly a director who knows how to build tension, and in certain scenes – some of which are shot in one long and occasionally nail-biting take – he does well to take his audience for a ride where anything could happen at any moment, whether it’s a humiliating sudden pat-down by the authorities in the middle of classroom or attempting to escape from dangerous gangsters through an abandoned complex. The prominent lack of a musical score (though there are a limited number of orchestral moments) adds to the overall documentarian feel, which Lerman with his fictional tale does decently enough to present a consistently grounded tone throughout.
It’s also a well-acted film, with strong performances across the board from lead Juan Minujín, who gives a cool and collected turn as the substitute of the title, to prominent Chilean actor Alfredo Castro who, if this were a much more mainstream awards contender, would almost certainly have been put forward as its biggest champion in the supporting categories (not just because it’s a very good performance, but also due to how it’s the kind of performance that most voters often pine over). The acting stays comfortably within Lerman’s naturalistic approach, which helps when things inevitably take a darker turn for some of these characters. You certainly feel some of their frustration, their fear, and even some of their sadness as life deals them a rubbish hand, forcing them to take extreme action in certain cases, and the performances more often than not succeed in their quest for empathy.
With all of that being said, though, The Substitute is still very much following the classic inspirational teacher formula almost to a beat, and it doesn’t take an expert in conventional film to spot the numerous tropes that it unapologetically runs with. Nearly every trait that you can think of when it comes to this kind of film might just show up at least once here, from the free-spirited teacher who swoops in to this unruly inner-city class and blow their minds with literature and poetry, to the personal connection between said teacher and a particularly troubled student that grows and develops over the course of the story. There’s even a scene that’s become a true staple in a lot of these films, where one of the kids delivers an inexplicably on-point hip-hop number while another kid beatboxes for him, which here is played without a hint of irony or self-awareness. It isn’t that the tropes themselves are bad, but primarily because you’ve seen them so often in films like Dead Poets Society or even as recently as Casablanca Beats, it’s hard not to point them out and laugh at how familiar they are in a movie that is keeping as straight a face as it possibly can.
Crucially, however, the constant dabbling in this formula does occasionally take you out of the naturalistic and almost documentarian aesthetic, and reminds you that you’re very much watching a movie, wherein things happen that would only occur in a screenplay rather than in real life. There are plot turns, dialogue exchanges, and supporting characters that feel all too heightened and even cartoonish to fully buy within this grounded universe, which would instead feel much more at home in one of the cornier inspirational teacher movies than they do here. If the script – credited to Lerman, María Meira and Luciana De Mello – didn’t feel the need to lean so heavily into its assigned formula, then maybe some of those larger-than-life developments might have felt a bit more earned.
Instead, The Substitute isn’t by any means a bad film, but it is one that’s always at odds with the template that it feels it has to follow to the letter.
SO, TO SUM UP…
The Substitute is a competently made and well-acted Argentine drama from filmmaker Diego Lerman, but it sticks all too closely to the familiar “inspirational teacher” formula, to where certain tropes clash with the more grounded filmmaking style.
