Director Laurent Cantet and his crew spent a full term filming inside a junior high school in one of Paris' multi-ethnic, working-class neighborhoods. He used the school's students and faculty as actors, workshopping and improvising, creating characters, scenes and narrative structure as they went along. The mesmerizing and insightful result is "The Class," which looks like a documentary but plays like a drama (and a potent drama at that).

The film, a Cannes prizewinner and Academy Award nominee, is based on Francois Begaudeau's novel about his true-life experiences as a teacher. Begaudeau plays Francois Marin, a fictionalized version of himself and the teacher on whose class the film is centered. Marin is dedicated, altruistic, skilled but imperfect and burdened with the task of teaching French grammar to kids who sometimes seem to resist him at every turn.

The arcane verb forms are useless in life, insist the mostly non-white students. Moreover, they believe the class ignores their ethnic identities in a misguided effort to make them feel more western or French. In one scene, they chastise Marin for using "Bill" and "cheeseburger" in a sentence meant to be grammatically instructional.

Some of the students are bright and promising, others are challenged as learners. All have in common high spirits and a sensitivity that keeps their teacher on his toes and defensive. Three students emerge as particularly vivid personalities: the Arab Sandra (Esmeralda Ouertani) and the Africans Souleymane (Franck Keita) and Khoumba (Rachel Regulier).

A slip of the tongue by Marin is skillfully exploited by Sandra in the film's climactic scene. The passage ends with an outburst by the volatile Souleymane that leaves him in danger of expulsion. His fate will be debated by patrons of the film, thanks to the painstakingly fair and balanced work of Cantet. He collaborated on the screenplay with Begaudeau and Robin Campillo.

Scrupulous fairness and balance, in fact, permeate all of "The Class." No one comes off as all right or all wrong. It's easy to buy at least part of all the many points of view that are expressed, both in the expulsion issue and in the tense student-teacher classroom dynamic.

Friday's first screening at the Grandin Theatre was attended by several dozen high-schoolers, perhaps on a field trip. They were quiet and attentive, suggesting that it would be a good idea for "The Class" to be seen by all middle- and high-schoolers. And by their teachers.