The Lesson, Review, PIFF2015

An honest teacher loses money after a bank goes kaput. This puts her in a bad way, as her husband who’s a drunkard, squanders all the money. One day she’s travelling in a bus and finds that her money is gone. The bus driver being a gentleman lets her ride and even lends her money, after quizzing her on a Greek god’s name. But, the bank won’t allow her to send the funds until she pays the exact amount. There’s a pond close by, and it has coins in them, thrown in by tourists who make a wish. She helps herself. On going to school, she finds her stolen money, at the canteen with the cashier. Her immediate guess is a kid from the class has done it. She scolds the class but is unable to recover the money or the culprit. She goes to her dad, who’s married to another woman, but her step-mom pisses her so much that she decides not to take his help. She borrows money from the money-lender but is unable to pay him back. He asks her to give his nephew good grades in class, which she does. It does not help. The money-lender asks her to come dressed in a thong and do oral sex. She comes but gives up and ends up robbing a bank to pay the debt. The script was good, pleasing cinematography, but the execution could have been better. The story had lots of in decisions and choices, which makes the script a strong point of the film. But it was slow and could have been made more interesting. The Lesson was a part of Global Cinema at PIFF 2015.