BAD APPLES is a dark comedy adapted by a Swedish director from a Swedish novel, yet it still feels remarkably British. Saoirse Ronan locks in as a teacher under duress, and taking ridiculous turn after turn, this fast-paced school saga will have you wondering how far you’d go when faced with a student from hell.
Trying her best to engage a room full of twelve-year-olds, with every step forward that teacher Maria Spencer (Saoirse Ronan) takes, she is flung back a mile, as one student in her class derails every earnest attempt towards originality and connection. Danny (Eddie Waller) is violent, loud, and abusive, but all of Maria’s cries for help are deflected by judgment on her ability to do her job. An indictment on a government system that devalues teachers and leaves them unsupported, Maria is hollowed out and exhausted by the Sisyphean task of getting her students back on track for their exams.
Spurred by the warning of an OFSTED inspection, Maria takes matters into her own hands, and a series of unfortunate events ensues. BAD APPLES is a tense, funny, emotional rollercoaster. It starts with an impossible child and leads viewers on a merry dance within a moral grey area. As she solves the problem of Danny, Maria’s professional and personal life turns around.
“An empty, dark school is a cursed liminal space, wielded here with skill.”
Hiding under tables, banging her head against a cabinet, and mindlessly playing a farming simulator at home, the physical comedy of Saoirse Ronan’s unravelling teacher is entertaining and relatable. An empty, dark school is a cursed liminal space, wielded here with skill. Motion sensor lights are a particular element of production design used for ominous and comedic effects, making corridors eerie, the classroom lonely when Maria is working late at her desk, and heightening the ridicule as she waves her arms to turn the light back on after being stuck there for so long.
As Maria avoids her ex (Jacob Anderson), who is now the deputy head of the school, and lives a sad single life in a home too big for her, Ronan perfectly captures the lows of pathetic pining and the eventual highs of professional satisfaction. As she makes increasingly questionable choices, it takes an actress of Ronan’s calibre, in a similar vein to her screaming, chaotic performance in THE OUTRUN, to keep the audience on her side.
“Though it feels modern, especially in a post-Fleabag era of messy women, the manic energy feels like the plot of a 20th-century classic, like a Muriel Spark novel or Beryl Bainbridge, especially The Bottle Factory Outing, with a school trip gone wrong opening the film.”
While the wealthier parents and headmistress will do anything to get ahead, the contrast to Danny’s father (Robert Emms), an overworked delivery driver who is always out, is a stark and significant commentary on class. Emms is cast brilliantly, both for his resemblance to Waller and in his wan, depressed depiction of a single father, resorting to an exploitative line of work to stay financially afloat, unable to give his child the support he needs. It quickly becomes clear that Danny was doomed without extra support at home or school. Vagabond though he is, he is the result of a broken system.
Filmed in Bristol, with the production design and wider casting of familiar faces from Holby City, the story’s Swedish origins (novel De Oönskade by Rasmus Andersson) and the director (Jonatan Etzler) are no impediment to making this story feel British. Though it feels modern, especially in a post-Fleabag era of messy women, the manic energy feels like the plot of a 20th-century classic, like a Muriel Spark novel or Beryl Bainbridge, especially The Bottle Factory Outing, with a school trip gone wrong opening the film.
With seething social commentary at its centre, BAD APPLES feels contemporary and culturally accurate to the landscape of public education in the UK. Normality becomes quickly warped by extenuating circumstances, and director Jonatan Etzler wields the school setting with skill, making and breaking tension in a way that makes this dark comedy relatable and disorienting all at once.