Don't listen to the negative reviews

Crappy film

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

A well informed, well acted character study of somebody who is misunderstood, and of somebody who is misunderstanding. maurice is five years old, and something of an enigma: he enjoys the normal pursuits of a healthy five year old, but he also writes poetry that is way beyond his years, and exhibits a level of empathy that many adults are incapable of. His Kindergarten teacher is a wannabe poet who can't find her core. In spotting his talent, she is at the same time jealous and protective of it.

The plot is plain, the acting is shallow, the editing is choppy and abrupt, the camera angles are just either too low or too high, too close or too far (very annoying and ineffective).Two very unnecessary full frontal male nude scenes which the story still can be told without them. In the second nude scene, she just took off her clothes like that? Was that got something to do with the recurring words "whores" and "prostitute"? And, what's the deal with that guy who threw candies at the kid? Then, the teacher went to the dance floor with him, even without his apology and with his conceited attitude? What about that really weird dance number the three of them put on? And, the ending? Why kidnapped the kid? What the #$&%? A pretentious movie which unsuccessful at trying to make something out of nothing. A weird kid and a weird teacher who are both acting weird under weird direction along with weird editing don't make an interesting movie, rather on the contrary... Just a weird movie!It's not art and definitely not entertainment.

Although we felt it didn't quite succeed, even on its own terms IMHO, "The Kindergarten Teacher" is still very watchable. The dour social criticism—poetry no longer has a place in the state of Israel!—didn't really speak to us, though the satirical portraits of the PC haters in Nira's poetry class and the weirdos at the poetry slam were quite amusing, in a depressing way. The main storyline, Nira's relationship with the chubby-cheeked prodigy, Yoav, gets your attention right away and really builds; our main complaint was that Yoav's character seems inconsistent—he's withdrawn and suspicious at first (and rightly so!), then suddenly turns trusting and confiding, without any real transition. (Maybe he just realizes he's found a new amanuensis to copy down his poems; we, on the other hand, were sorry to see the last of Israeli singing star Ester Rada, who plays Yoav's nanny, Miri.)Another plausibility problem, at least judging by the subtitles, is that even the best read five-year-old could never have composed the poems he recites ("banality"? really?)… The plot line got a little too cryptic for our taste as well—there's a teasing suggestion that Yoav's poems were actually written by Miri, another that he's channeling in verses recited by his uncle years before—and there are a couple of episodes meant to illustrate the, as it were, banality of Nira's life that seem like filler, but writer/director Nadav Lapid pulls it all together in the almost wordless final scene, set in a glitzy Sinai resort, that really makes it clear what Nira's nutty mission was all about.

The other is the spectator. You may be tempted to say that the film is incomplete for its pessimistic ending, as truth spans the time, when clearly you have to complete it yourself. Just as the teacher has to complete her purpose. Apparently the film tries to tell us that the immaterial has no match in value for the social mentality against the material pursuit. But the author uses the duality of the teacher and the child, of its creation and the audience to create connotation. Duality means one. The teacher and the kid are one. She behaves that way. In such a subtle manner when she takes the kid's poems as her own. "What is love?" trying to prepare the kid. The teacher knows, but she is not. She is the reasoning, the will, the courage. "I don't know" candidly replies to the teacher. The kid does not know, but he is. He is the poet, the poetry, the face of love."Si senor, co-ro-na de cris-ta-les (yeah, yeah, yeah)" is just how the film spectacularly sustains the failure to save such an invisible treasure.