Maren Ade's The Forest for the Trees is one of the best movies about the travails of being a teacher since Nathalie Baye cracked up at a Lyon lycée in Bertrand Tavernier's Une semaine de vacances 26 years ago. The diff erence is that Melanie (Eva Loebau), the lonely, young teacher in a Karlsruhe school, isn't surrounded by supportive friends the way Baye was. She comes to a new job in a strange city halfway through the term, with unrealistic expectations of what she can do for her pupils. They prove an unruly bunch and each class gets more and more out of hand. Meanwhile, she rebuffs a gauche male teacher who wants to help her, and tries to strike up friendships with her new neighbours. Mistakenly, Melanie believes she's established a relationship with a sophisticated boutique owner who just uses her to lean on while having troubles with a boyfriend. Watching her misread the world, lose control of her life and descend into total demoralisation is a painful business. But her ordeal is observed with honest compassion and a total lack of sentimentality, and the director and her star make you care for Melanie the way Flaubert makes us care for Emma Bovary.