By John Corrado
In his film Bad Apples, Swedish director Jonatan Etzler fully commits to a tricky tonal tightrope walk between drama, thriller, darkest of dark comedies, and barn-burner of a satire. It will polarize viewers, but is also completely engaging if you are able to get on its wavelength.
Saoirse Ronan stars in the film as Maria, a young elementary school teacher in the UK whose meekness gets taken advantage of by certain students, with parents starting to notice her lack of control over the classroom. The film opens on a class trip to an apple cider mill, where one of the boys has thrown his shoe into the machine. The camera follows it bobbing along with the apples, about to cause serious damage to the system.
The boy is Danny (Eddie Waller), a hellish problem child in Maria’s class who is holding back the other students with his bullying and violent, destructive outbursts. An incident with the precocious Pauline (Nia Brown), the wannabe teacher’s pet who is enamoured with Maria and seems to want her job leading the class, sets a series of events in motion that end up spiralling out of control.
It’s here that Bad Apples takes an extreme turn, with Maria making a drastic choice that might strain some credibility. But if you can just roll with it, the film takes us on a wild and darkly entertaining ride. Rather than being the feel-good story of teacher and pupil, Etzler instead delivers a spiritual cousin of sorts to Bobcat Goldthwait’s World’s Greatest Dad, at least in the depths of what he is willingly to mine for pitch-black humour. It’s frequently very funny, but we are laughing through gasps.
Ronan gives a fascinating performance as a teacher in over her head struggling to cope. It’s in a different key from what we’ve seen her do before, allowing her to show some genuine comedic skills. She is backed up by strong work from her child co-stars. Waller and Brown are given incredibly tricky performances, the former playing a destructive, foul-mouthed force who still has some fleeting moments of sympathy, and the latter a manipulative goody two-shoes. They capably go toe-to-toe with Ronan, bringing to mind her own beginnings as a child star.
Throughout its blackly comic twists and turns, Bad Apples also works as sardonic social satire, bordering on actual thought-provoking commentary about how difficult children are dealt with in a classroom. It won’t be for everyone, but is consistently surprising and funny, with Etzler more often than not nailing the tricky balance between shocks and laughs.
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