Saorise Ronan is a teacher on the edge in this preposterous and silly dramedy that lacks any subtlety or nuance
The opening of Bad Apples, the english language debut of Swedish director Jonathan Etzler, shows us the process of cider making during a school trip. How the “bad apples” are sifted and separated from the healthy ones, how one rotten apple could, theoretically ruin the whole batch. And student Danny (Eddie Waller) has taken the aggressive approach of throwing his sneaker into the machine thus causing unbridled chaos. Is he the bad apple of the title? In short, yes.
This signposted beginning is a warning of things to come in a film which hammers the audience over the head with its very literal and very ludicrous examination of the school system’s evident flaws and mismanagement of troubled kids. Maria (Saorise Ronan) is a struggling primary school teacher who always wanted to teach but is finding it hard to connect with and control her class. This is mainly to do with one child, Danny, who is making her and the students lives absolute hell. He’s late, he swears, he physically assaults others and you get the sense that maybe, though cruel to admit, the class would be better off if one day he just disappeared.
After being put on a warning by the headteacher Sylvia (Rakie Ayola) she pleads with Danny’s father Josh (Robert Emms) a disillusioned, dissociated delivery driver to keep him away from school, just until the Ofsted inspection is done. But with no luck and after finding Danny smashing up her car she accidentally knocks him out and on a whim after Danny returns to consciousness and threatens spilling the beans she decides to kidnap and lock him in her basement. Here begins a ludicrous game of cat and mouse that attempts to skewer the morals and community driven hysteria around tragedies and the processes of educational bodies in the face of a scandal.
At least Saorise Ronan is never less than great and she carries the emotional heft of Maria and the hardships that have befallen her because of the unfortunate circumstances outside of her control. Danny represents the control she has lost from her life after her partner left her mid house renovation and the rut that has sustained since. But this game of control and building of rules in this messed up scenario are predictable and reminiscent of Jan Komasa’s very recent and superior The Good Boy. As we sympathise with Maria and Danny to some extent despite his general unpleasantness there are textbook scenes of the pair bonding over video games or Danny actually learning when taken out of a class setting. It’s almost as if this arrangement might be benefitting everyone which plays as a loud reference to the way school systems often shove “problem children” to one side. Out of sight out of mind.
The screenplay from Jess O’Kane jumps between fairly ridiculous revelations and merges the plight Maria faces with Danny with his teacher’s pet opposite Pauline (Nia Brown). In the same class and always eager to impress, she is desperate to be best friends with Maria and coddles up to her at every opportunity. She may even be the downfall of Maria in a similar but different way Danny is. The realms of believability are often thrown out the window in an attempt at absurdist humour with kids and their parents played as silly, morally inept caricatures.
Etzler’s direction is fairly smooth if unremarkable but his insistence at deploying the deeply oppressive and boomingly loud score from Chris Roe at every opportunity becomes wildly grating. There is a near constant flurry of high pitched strings at an anxiety inducing pace reminding the audience that yes indeed things have gotten out of hand and there is always the risk of imminent danger. There’s no room for the material to breathe and the more interesting questions around the idea of cutting off the problem at its roots are never mulled over for long before another silly plot escalation.
1.5 / 5
While the idea has potential the general ineptitude and unrestraint of Bad Apples is less of a satisfying crunch and more of a soft, mushy disappointment.
