The Kindergarten Teacher Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

The Kindergarten Teacher Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Brian Orndorf December 13, 2015

As a tale of obsession, “The Kindergarten Teacher” is difficult to approach, as the object of desire (intellectually, not sexually) is a five-year-old child. Writer/director Nadav Lapid understands he’s skating on thin ice with his premise, but he manages to create something unsettling without crossing lines of good taste. Crafted with care and attentive to the details of human response, “The Kindergarten Teacher” is an intricately woven study of care developing into delusion, with Lapid showing amazing control over the feature’s tone and pace.

Exploring an elementary school teacher’s (Sarit Larry) interest in a kindergarten student’s skill with poetry, Lapid’s screenplay goes for the slow burn approach, absorbing what begins as curiosity and eventually develops into infatuation, with the adult anointing herself a defender of the child’s gifts and future interests, leading her to cross boundaries, fogging her decision-making skills as she combats a tired marriage and life with renewed purpose. “The Kindergarten Teacher” isn’t a Michael Haneke production, so matters keep away from utter doom, but there’s a darkness to the picture that’s intriguing, watching the titular character slowly lose perspective as she chases an invented ideal, ignoring all the warning signs a person in her position of responsibility should be aware of.

The Kindergarten Teacher Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

"The Kindergarten Teacher" is a movie that largely employs extreme close-ups as a way to achieve intimacy and switch perspectives, leaving the AVC encoded image (1.85:1 aspect ratio) presentation open for prime facial texture inspection, which comes through crisply. Detail is also available everywhere else, exploring schoolroom decorations and numerous locations. It's an HD film and looks it, addicted to shallow focus images, but clarity is there and colors are stable, providing natural hues to clothing and exteriors, while skintones are spot-on. Delineation is crisp, handling low-lit encounters well, but some posturization remains.

The Kindergarten Teacher Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The 5.1 DTS-HD MA sound mix gives a small film a larger aural presence, with surrounds delivering compelling activity when explored, including classroom bustle with noisy children and a thunderstorm encounter that, frankly, startled me, adding welcome depth to environmental changes and echoed rooms. Dialogue exchanges are clean and clear, managing crowd activity well. Music is sparse, but comes through with heft, including a few club encounters that deliver a pleasing low-end throb.

The Kindergarten Teacher Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Interview (18:35, HD) with writer/director Nadav Lapid discusses the autobiographical origins of "The Kindergarten Teacher," the nature of poetry, and the finer points of characterization.

• "Why?" (5:22, HD) is a short film from Lapid.

• And a Theatrical Trailer (1:51, HD) is included.

The Kindergarten Teacher Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Lapid plays "The Kindergarten Teacher" intimately, with extensive use of close-ups and shifting POVs to put the viewer in the minds of the characters. It works, but the feature is more potent when stepping back and taking in the unfolding transgression, permitting a clean, hard look at the tricks of the mind, especially when passion takes control of reality.