Based on the 2014 Israeli film of the same name, The Kindergarten Teacher is about Lisa Spinelli (Maggie Gyllenhaal), who is – you guessed it – a kindergarten teacher. She has a painfully normal life, she has high school aged kids who she struggles to relate to, she’s taking poetry classes to find some sense of self-fulfillment. Like I said, it’s not bad, but it’s clear that she is someone who hoped for something more in her life than what she got.
Things quickly change when one day realizes that one of her students, Jimmy Roy (Parker Sevak), is a gifted poet. She immediately becomes fascinated by his skills, and pursues every possible avenue for him to explore those skills. However, that well intentioned fascination quickly turns into an unhealthy obsession.
First off, minor nitpick, I know we’re all not the same, but I have a hard time buying the idea of an Indian parent not immediately taking as much advantage as possible when they find out that their child is some incredible prodigy. I’m only half-kidding here. I don’t know if writer/director, Sara Colangelo, intentionally wrote the student to be an Indian or if it was just how the casting ended up being, but there isn’t a lot of attention given to the racial dynamic here, and because we spend so little time with Jimmy and his father, Nikhil (Ajay Naidu), we never get a sense of who they are, and why they act the way they do, aside from one scene that gives some lip service to Nikhil wanting Jimmy to have a normal life. It’s a choice that doesn’t necessarily kill the movie or anything, but it does take away a greater complexity that it could’ve had.
The focus of the film is squarely on Lisa. It’s a character study through and through, and we see everything from her perspective. Unfortunately, the film spends so much time observing her that it forgets to really say anything particularly interesting about who she is, and what she’s doing. I didn’t care for the film at all, but at least 2017’s Gifted tried to explore the complex dynamics that can evolve within a family when it comes to dealing with a young child showing intelligence beyond their years. It’s not that there isn’t depth here, but it’s very basic, and mostly self-explanatory. With just the summary I wrote, you should be able to figure out what the film is going to do, and what it’s trying to say, which honestly isn’t all that much.
It helps that Lisa is played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, who is pretty much always great, and she is able to elevate the thin material here. The film is empathetic to her struggles, as even she seems to be fully aware that her obsession with this kid is not a good thing, but she continues going with it anyway. It’s the kind of performance where you do a lot of reading between the lines, she rarely says what she really means to most of the characters, and you have to take in various context clues to fully understand why she does what she does. It’s a really good performance, and she easily carries the film.
Colangelo’s direction is sensitive, observant, and knows to keep as much focus on Gyllenhaal as possible. Since it’s all about her perspective, the camera is used to capture her every look and gesture, and it does so effectively. I haven’t seen the 2014 film, so I can’t speak to any changes that might’ve been made in adapting it for an American audience, but it definitely doesn’t feel like something that was adapted from foreign source material. I think Colangelo has a lot of skill here, but the film is missing something that I can’t quite put my finger on.
I wouldn’t say The Kindergarten Teacher is a bad film, but it’s a very underwhelming one. As a character study, it doesn’t say anything particularly provocative or interesting. Perhaps if it was willing to go darker or something, then maybe, but as is, there isn’t much to say about her character that wouldn’t seem obvious. However, because Maggie Gyllenhaal is as good as she is, and the filmmaking goes out of its way to make sure it focuses on her, the film remains compelling enough. It only ever comes to life when it deals in the idea of her concerns over Jimmy and his art versus the indifference of everyone else, but it only comes into play at a handful of scenes, and a final moment that I’m not entirely sure I was comfortable with, in terms of its implications. Either way, it has enough merit to make it watchable and engaging, but needed more work.