ABSTRACT
The idea that pedagogical relationships are both fundamentally erotic, based on the student's fantasy of the teacher, and only properly educational if those desires go unfulfilled, appears at least as far back as Plato's Symposium, wherein a number of attractive younger men and learned older men gather to praise Eros, the god of love, experienced in its most familiar guise as human desire. Eros as the basis for learning has become a fundamental premise of both high and low cultural attitudes toward education, and presents itself as a regular theme in popular representations of pedagogy. Different tells the story of Paul Krner, a virtuosic violinist, and Kurt Sivers, an admiring musician, who never misses Krner's concerts. Mikal is more faithful to the story and title than its Swedish predecessor Vingarne, which is largely lost. La Maternelle begins and ends with a proposal of marriage; it is a tightly crafted film that is poetically book ended.
