The gentle touch

OK, no funny business this week. Just a straightforward review. No interrogative techniques. No verse. No sky-writing. I don’t have the time. Or the energy. I have a life. It’s quite a crappy one, full of ennui — who are these people who say there aren’t enough hours in the day? There are far too many! — but if I don’t attend to it, who will? (If you leave ennui to its own devices, it will take over your gutters, and then fur up your pipes, and, if it doesn’t get into the brickwork, you’re lucky.) So let’s get on with it, and on to Monsieur Lazhar, which was nominated in the best foreign category at the Oscars — it lost out to the Iranian film A Separation, which I trust you have seen, or there truly is no hope for you — and is what I would call a Tinkling Piano Film.