Mrs. Géquil is a shy teacher despised by her colleagues and students. On a stormy night, while conducting an experiment in her lab, she is struck by lightning and faints. When she wakes up, she feels decidedly different… and the appearance of the dangerous Mrs. Hyde soon impacts on Mrs. Géquil’s teaching methods.
"This is a film about school or, more precisely, about the difficulty inherent in the transmission of learning. Indeed, Madame Géquil’s tardy educational success will ‘burn her wings’ (and the rest). Only by becoming another woman will she be able to pass something on to her students at last. Except that this other woman won’t stop there! Her newfound authority is merely one stage in a headlong movement that is beyond Madame Géquil’s control. In short, the transformation that has allowed her to realize herself finally as a teacher will turn out to be very dangerous. No metamorphosis is entirely harmless: who can say how far the internal changes that allow us to find success at last really go? I am not of course claiming that the murder of teenagers is the price to pay for educational success! Stevenson’s story allows me to deal with school today, its difficulties and its hopes. One important point about the high school scenes: most of the comical or apparently ‘wacky’ scenes in the screenplay, like the two supervised educational projects or the minute of silence requested by the principal following the death of a student are strictly factual. Teachers working in the Paris suburbs related these anecdotes to me. Indeed, I devise the screenplay in close collaboration with teachers. They told me stories and I regularly attended classes. Finally, I also used my own experience, having taught three years in high schools in the Paris suburbs." [Serge Bozon]
Serge Bozon (1972) initially worked as an actor and film critic (Trafic, Lettre du Cinéma, Cahiers du cinéma, Transfuge, Vertigo) before directing his first feature, L’amitié (1998). He has also made Mods (2002) and La France (2006), screened in the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes and winner of the Prix Jean Vigo. In 2013, Tip-Top received a SACD Special Mention at Cannes.
