Sick Product of a Sick System

Load of rubbish!!

best movie i've ever seen.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Illicit student-teacher sexual relationships have probably been happening for a long time. In the last few decades, it's been hitting the headlines every so often. While "A Teacher" does not depict or is based on any of those headlined events, it shows how it (illicit relationship) goes about.H.S. Teacher Diane Watts (Lindsay Burdge) is in a relationship with her student, Eric Tull (Will Brittain). After the first few establishing scenes, it shows our couple "getting into it." The movie continues on as does their relationship.Diane's brother comes into town. From their conversation, it is clear there is something going on with their mother and other issues back home. Diane seems reluctant to talk about or face those problems and (afterwards) they are never talked about in the rest of the film.Thus we have Diane's problems; as the film goes on it is safe to say she had some psychological problems which are never explained. Whatever Diane's brother indicated, is probably what was bugging Diane and affected her. All we can surmise are those said problems probably led to her affair with Eric. It would have been nice to see how the relationship came to being, but even that is not explained.As things start to turn for worse in the relationship, Diane's emotional problems start to take over her thinking abilities and all does not bode well for her.I echo all who said in their reviews that character development was lacking; add on to that, back story. While in my opinion, the characters were played well along with the (short) story, a little more explanation why Diane was the way she was and how they decided to have the relationship would have helped.I enjoyed this short indie film, but even indie films can use more detail to their characters and story.

Hannah Fidell's directorial feature debut, 'A Teacher', is a disturbing film that has a brilliant performance from Lindsay Burdge. From the sulking score, to the long camera shots, this forbidden and illegal sexual tale spins out of control fast, but has a heavy psychological tone as we watch our main character descend into a steep downward spiral of madness and obsession.Burdge plays Diana, a high school teacher who seems to be a loner outside the classroom, but once in class, she opens up and is very charismatic. We are thrown into the middle of Diana's illicit relationship with one of her students, Eric (Will Brittain). We do not see how it all started, and we see scene after scene of the two having sex in different places whether it be in a car at night, Diana's house when her roommate is out for the night, or at Eric's parent's ranch house near Austin, TX.The pair seem to have the same feelings for one another, however the only thing we really see is a sexual relationship, though we clearly see that Diana is emotionally stunted and needs to have some gap filled in with this torrid affair. She even allows Eric to take control in the bedroom. soon we see that Eric is her whole life as she becomes very distant from her roommate and colleagues at school and when her brother comes into town, she quickly shuts down and leaves him sitting at the restaurant. It's evident that her affair isn't the first of its kind. When her roommate invites her to a party of people their own age, she wants to leave as soon as she gets there and spends the little time there texting Eric and looking at his pictures. It's become an unhealthy obsession now.After an exposing photo makes the rounds at school of a freshman girl posing topless, Diana becomes scared and asks Eric to delete all of the photos from his phone that she has sent. Once this happens, she begins to question herself and her actions, but still continues on. When an employee of Eric's ranch house almost catches the two of them in the deed, Diana calls the relationship off, but her unnatural obsession and sickness cannot be controlled, which leads to some very unfavorable moments, making the audience scream out "Nooo."Fidell's camera-work is impressive and reminded me of Darren Aronofsky's 'The Wrestler' as we see the steady-cam shot from the back of Diana as she walks through the school and on her jogs completely alone. It's very unsettling. Brittain plays the student lover very well as we never see him brag to his friends of his conquest, nor is he at all an annoying teenager or obnoxious. He is actually quite charming, level-headed, and always plays it cool, even when things spiral out of control. And then there is Burdge who does a phenomenal job in her role as she tries to box up her unnatural feelings all the while she seems wears her heart on her sleeve when it comes to her young lover.What keeps this film from being great is its repetitiveness. It's a slow descent into a psychotic obsession that shows the same thing scene after scene of the two character having sex, only in different locations. If there was a bit more character exploration, then 'A Teacher' would have received an A. But due to its inconsistencies a flaws it receives a C for effort and acting.

As a character study, it doesn't work, since we never learn anything about the two leads other than that they want to have sex with each other.I don't understand the teacher's motivations for anything. Her sudden turn from rightly concerned that this will get out to insanely needy and obsessed? Don't get it, don't care much about it.The boy is similarly a cipher. He sleeps with his teacher until she starts acting like a lunatic and then gets his dad and the school involved. At an hour and 15 minutes it's hard to get any character development, let alone a plot, so saying that what this film wants to be is a great character study is missing the mark completely. All I could think about was what a huge controversy this would have been if the roles were reversed. Male teacher, female student? Everyone would be up in arms talking about how horrifically the student had been abused. I wished we could gotten a title crawl about how long this 'teacher' ended up in jail for, but no such luck.

Director Hannah Fidell got the idea of the movie Teacher while she worked at a restaurant waitress and was attracted to a young patron. She wondered how this would happen to a teacher. We often hear of older men and younger women, but how about the older woman, younger man? In A Teacher, Diana is a teacher at a suburban Texas high school. She has a strain relationship with her family and has few intimate friends. She crosses the lines and begins a sexual affair with a student Eric. In it, she is taken away to reignite the excitement of youthful lust and adapts to the world of quickies, sexting, and fantasy of her young suitor. Besides the ethical dilemma, she is carried away to continue this fantasy to a point of no return. This movie does a good job to show the humanity of Diana who simply craves emotional intimacy that she blocks from the thick wall around her. I saw this film as part of the Atlanta Film Festival.