Radical: a charming if formulaic classroom drama
Based on the true story of an inspirational teacher’s transformative work at an underperforming school in a Mexican border town, this hopeful film manages to rise above the boat metaphors in its heavy-handed script.
“What use have we for such fantasies?,” Paloma’s father asks her, upon finding a magazine about yachts in their shack, adjacent to the garbage heap they scavenge to survive in their Mexican border town. The magazine is part of the secret cache of publications that feed Paloma’s natural curiosity for science – recently sparked by her new teacher, Sergio. The distance between her impoverished reality and her lofty goal to become an aerospace engineer makes Paloma’s ambition seem a misplaced, even harmful fantasy. Her father argues as much in the film’s third act, when he finds a pamphlet on Space Camp given to Paloma by Sergio (Eugenio Derbez), the educator-as-hero in this charming if formulaic classroom drama.
Still, Radical seems to take Paloma’s father’s question seriously, cognisant that the film itself might be criticised of fantasising. As critics have argued of Hollywood entries in this sub-genre (see Stand and Deliver (1988) and Dangerous Minds (1995)), such films are, at best, naïve about the capacity of individual action to triumph over the socioeconomic obstacles they use as dramatic fodder. At worst, it is regressive: apologia for collective inaction.
The fact that Radical is based on a real-life success story – that of Paloma Noyola and Sergio Correa, as reported in a 2013 Wired cover story – helps guard against such accusations. So too does the fate of the other two sixth graders highlighted (fictional composites, according to writer-director Christopher Zalla). The rate of triumph to tragedy is 1:3; Sergio is only able to save the one.
Almost as improbably as Paloma rises above Matamoros’ sinking conditions through Sergio’s tutelage, Radical rises above its heavy-handed script, loaded with clichés and familiar beats, through the loving attention and dynamism of its veteran filmmakers. (So replete is Radical with metaphors of boats staying afloat and rocket-ships defying gravity that it’s hard to write about the film without them).
Cinematographer Mateo Londono uses vintage lenses and colour desaturation to match the film’s look to its themes. He makes Matamoros – and Sergio’s classroom – look dusty and poor, but also airy and filled with light. The convincing spontaneity of the classroom scenes are also a credit to the filmmakers and to Derbez, best-known to English-speaking audiences as a transformative teacher in another Sundance favourite, CODA (2021). Irresistible here as teacher-cum-lifeboat-captain, he has great rapport with the child actors and with Daniel Haddad as Chucho, a cynic-turned-believer school administrator, another cliché and another surrogate for the viewer’s conversion.
Whether or not this conversion to hope serves a conservative outlook (encouraging passivity about the status quo) or a progressive one (encouraging meaningful action towards changing it) depends on the viewer. It is towards the latter, Radical insists, that such galvanising fantasies can still be useful.
► Radical is in UK cinemas from 9 August.