Review: 'The Teachers' Lounge' is a nail-biting thriller that will keep you guessing

By Peter Travers

Everyone who's ever been to school knows that a classroom is the world in miniature. And "The Teachers' Lounge," now in theaters, knows how to send that message in the form of a nail-biting thriller that deservedly put Germany on the Oscar shortlist for best international film.

Riveting from first scene to last, "The Teachers' Lounge" takes off like a rocket from the moment that newbie instructor Carla Nowak, played by the sensational Leonie Benesch (Prince Philip's sister on "The Crown"), suspects that something is wrong in her circumscribed world as a Polish emigre teaching math and physical education at a German middle school.

A series of thefts at Carla's school puts students on edge, with faculty suspicion wrongly falling on one of Carla's students, Ali (Can Rodenbostel), the son of Turkish immigrants. The immigrant angle clearly interests İlker Çatak, a German writer-director of Turkish descent, who is alert to racial and class bias, especially as certain students are searched for carrying extra cash.

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Leonie Benesch, left, and Leonard Stettnisch appear in a scene from the film, "The Teacher's Lounge."

Carla feels the same sensitivity, given her Polish roots, which alienate her colleagues who perceive her do-gooder attitude as unearned moral superiority. Carla is particularly distressed when fellow teachers Milosz Dudek (Rafael Stachowiak) and Thomas Liebenwerda (Michael Klammer) encourage students to spy and snitch on their peers.

As tempers flare, pitting seventh graders against teachers, parents and school administrators, the ever idealistic Carla sets out to prove Ali's innocence. In the process, she inadvertently sparks chaos since she didn't wait for authorization to leave a laptop camera open on her desk in the lounge in a sting to catch the culprit in the act of stealing a wallet she's left out in the open.

Panic ensues when the camera catches just one sleeve of a blouse with a distinctive star pattern on it that Carla assumes belongs to office staffer Friederike Kuhn (Eva Löbau). When Carla confronts the woman, she angrily denies the charge, threatening legal action against the principal, Dr. Bettina Böhm (Anne-Kathrin Gummich), who knows the rules forbid any secret recording on campus.

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Leonie Benesch appears in a scene from the film, "The Teacher's Lounge."

What's Carla to do, especially since Friederike is the mother of Carla's pet student, Oskar (Leo Stettnisch, nailing every nuance)? Oskar threatens Carla with "consequences" if she doesn't publicly apologize to his mom. Those consequences include a smear campaign against Carla that Oskar orchestrates with the sole purpose of ruining Carla's reputation and career.

With the school now divided into war zones, Carla must fight against becoming collateral damage.

The tension escalates to such unbearable levels -- the score by Marvin Miller will shatter your nerves with its screeching violins -- that Carla conducts her class in a communal primal scream that you may want to share.

By never leaving the school grounds, Çatak sets up a hothouse atmosphere that is primed to explode. And does it ever. At the climax, a major character is carried out of the school like a hero on the shoulders of students.

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Leonard Stettnisch appears in a scene from the film, "The Teacher's Lounge."

It's not who you think it is, another reason why "The Teachers' Lounge" will keep you guessing, as a tale of petty theft at a German middle school becomes a battle between freedom of expression and institutional control all too easy to recognize as our own.