Drama steadily cranks up tension
A shepherdess of impressionable young minds leads us into murky ethical waters in director Sara Colangelo’s gripping Englishlanguage remake of the Israeli film of the same title.
Reset to Staten Island, The Kindergarten Teacher is a psychological drama, which pivots deliciously on a fearless lead performance from Maggie Gyllenhaal as an educator whose obsession with a five-year-old pupil warps her instinct to nurture.
Colangelo’s script invites Gyllenhaal to walk a tightrope between predator and misguided protector, which she accomplishes with dizzying aplomb. She teases the ambiguities of her flawed character and these subtle shifts in tone and intent steadily crank up tension.
Kindergarten teacher Lisa Spinelli (Gyllenhaal) yearns for a spark of excitement in her marriage to her husband Grant (Michael Chernus).
Her relationship with her own children is strained and, to compound Lisa’s dissatisfaction, her efforts at writing poetry fail to impress Simon (Gael Garcia Bernal), the teacher of an evening class for aspiring scribes.
In one session, Lisa recites verse composed by one of her students, a cherub called Jimmy Roy (Parker Sevak), and passes off his poem as the fruits of her creative toil.
Simon is impressed and gives the carefully chosen words a glowing reception.
Buoyed by the undeserved praise, Lisa surmises that Jimmy is a “young Mozart” in need of nurturing.
She inserts herself into the boy’s life and disrupts the influence of other adults including Jimmy’s babysitter Becca (Rosa Salazar).
Lisa fails to convince Jimmy’s father Nikhil (Ajay Naidu) that his boy should forgo weekly baseball practice with friends to publicly recite poetry. But Lisa has come too far to stop now...
The Kindergarten Teacher is an expertly composed character study that holds us in a vice-like grip, steadily forcing the air out of our lungs as Lisa jeopardises her reputation and the well-being of her innocent ward.
Gyllenhaal is inscrutable when she needs to be and gels wonderfully with youngster Sevak, who is a natural in front of the camera. Colangelo makes light work of the 97-minute running time, leaving us to make our own choices before we sink into the moral quagmire with the lead character.