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This is a really good canadian (francophone) film that uses the good´ol teachers sub-sub-genre for a better cause. The film explores a number of different things:
First and foremost: coping with death, loss and grief. This it´s done in two ways, as an individual and as a community. The way children and adults cope with an incomprehensible suicide (the blamings, rationalizations, sadness, etc) are as interesting as the way a single husband and father keeps the weight of a hate crime that stole him everything and the survival guilt for being alive.
Also this is a great character study of a good mannered old school (pun intended) teacher who cant adapt to the modern regularized and burocratic western styles of teaching. He is old fashioned and he is not perfect but he cares and that´s the most important thing.
The secondary characters are not really developed and their circumstances are just sketched but they all feel real and tridimensional. The protagonist makes a really good job with a mild mannered character showing great restraint where it was needed. The only dark point in the movie are the not too believable female child protagonist and her relationship with her teacher but it works well enough not to get in the way of an otherwise good movie.
Another thing that the movie brings to the table and leaves there for your own consideration is the way the relations between teachers and children work in western society (canadian society at least). The movie obiously pushes forward more leeway and closer relations between teacher and child but the argument feels too forced to be convincing. At least it makes you think about it.
9/10
