MAGGIE’S PLAN

THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER I Prodigies and pedagogues pop up in Sara Colangelo’s remake…

It can be a lot of things for a lot of different people,” remarks Sara Colangelo of The Kindergarten Teacher. Just her second film as writerdirector after 2014’s Little Accidents, this enigmatic tale of a teacher and her poetry-writing child prodigy has thrown up all sorts of interpretations since it bowed at Sundance earlier this year. “Everyone has a different take,” she adds, “which is what makes the story interesting.”

The film stars Maggie Gyllenhaal, in her strongest film lead since the days of Sherry baby and Secretary, as Lisa Spinelli, a Staten Island kindergarten teacher who realises her five-year-old pupil Jimmy (Parker Sevak) has an uncanny ability for reciting poems way beyond his years or comprehension. Taking it upon herself, Lisa decides to nurture this talent.

If you think you know where this is heading, then think again. “I didn’t want the movie to be about a child genius,” says Colangelo. Partly because there is already a blossoming sub-genre of such movies, including everything from Jodie Foster’s Little Man Tate to the recent Gifted, but also because she’s “skeptical” of the very idea.

“I’m not sure how I feel about genius,” she muses. “Perhaps it does exist in very few cases.” Instead,

The Kindergarten Teacher – adapted from Nadav Lapid’s 2014 Hebrew language film Hag anenet – looks at the “morally ambiguous journey” of Lisa, who gradually oversteps boundaries with Jimmy. It’s here where the film’s multiple readings come into play. “I’ve talked to a lot of women who felt it was really empowering,” Colangelo says, “others who felt it was really upsetting.”

What can be said without spoiling is that Lisa is mired in a midlife crisis, with a joyless marriage and a teenage son who is planning to join the military, much to her chagrin. Jimmy, then, becomes the conduit for her mislaid ambitions. “This life of nurturing constantly and feeding others and never getting fed herself… she wants this creative life, so she just goes for it.”

Gyllenhaal, who became a producer on the film, was the first actress Colangelo sent the script to. “I was thinking of actors that are both relatable and have a sense of daring and risktaking, and Maggie immediately came to mind,” she says. In every scene, “She’s so critical to the movie and she has a natural intensity that I think was perfect for this. She’s just very smart. She does her homework.”

Awarded the directing prize at Sundance, Colangelo has since seen the film picked up by Netflix for US distribution, a game-changer for an indie that would usually play a limited run in cinemas. “In many cases, a lot of my family members never saw my films unless I gave them a copy,” she says. Now they have no excuse…

ETA | 8 FEBRUARY / THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER OPENS NEXT YEAR.