‘Elementary’ Review: French Docmaker Claire Simon Returns to the Schoolroom With Endearing Results

variety.com:

Guy Lodge Film Critic Like her fellow documentarian Frederick Wiseman, Claire Simon is drawn to institutions, and the human flow that keeps them running.

Where many of Wiseman’s films favor a big picture, a systemic view, Simon often works in more intimate close-up, picking out faces and personalities from a larger institutional community.

That warmly sociable approach serves the veteran French filmmaker well in “Elementary,” the latest of several Simon documentaries to be set in and around a place of learning — in this case, a diversely attended public elementary school in the outer-Paris suburb of Ivry-sur-Seine, also the backdrop for her 2018 high-school portrait “Young Solitude.” Looking on with keen attention but little obstruction as the school’s staff and student body negotiate daily challenges of education, communication and conflict, “Elementary” is a gentle, good-humored film, but not a toothless one — making as it does an unspoken but resonant plea for France’s squeezed public schooling system via its lively vignettes of classroom and playground activity.

Following the relative arthouse success last year of Simon’s imposing healthcare opus “Our Body,” this shorter, brighter work should easily find sympathetic distributors following its premiere in Cannes’ Special Screenings program.