Stealing School, a surprisingly effective plagiarism thriller, centers around University students, and the power they have in shaping our world. That’s probably blowing things out too much, let me start with a smaller focus. Stealing School is about April Chen, accused of plagiarising her final paper mere days before graduation. April’s professor doesn’t care one way or the other, but the Teaching Assistant who caught her demands a tribunal, a mock-trial (with J. Reinhold) to decide if the claims are true.
Writer/director Li Dong takes this concept into meaner, darker territory as the film unspools, revealing the hidden motivations behind every member of the tribunal. And while this is admirably accomplished in less than 90 minutes, misfires constantly, bring the story to a dead stop.
The film begins, April defending herself against Keith, the brazen Teaching Assistant who seems determined to fail her. Despite suspicion that her first papers for the class were plagiarized, her name was cleared; April’s third paper is the one under scrutiny. Her track record places doubt in the audience’s mind, suggesting she may not be as innocent as she claims, even as the film positions her as a sympathetic victim.
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If the writing succeeds anywhere, it’s in this tightrope walk. April could be innocent or guilty, leaving the audience to piece together clues as context is slowly revealed. When the truth is revealed, it satisfies both possibilities, swapping a typical, exonerating ending for a cynical (and much more interesting) one. It’s just the right ending for a film so obsessed with corruption.
Mostly confined to a single space, Stealing School isn’t always great at expanding from the four walls of the tribunal. Here’s a good example: a flashback between April and her professor reveals why he has been so quiet in the tribunal; April has something over him, and it’s career-ending. The scene is just as long as it needs to be, and establishes a key piece of information, not just for the professor, but for April’s talent in manipulation.
Now a worse one: in an earlier scene, April’s student lawyer quits, and on his way out he tells another student to make sure April doesn’t do anything stupid. He doesn’t know that this other student is leaking the tribunal to the press, far from an ally to April. This is interesting, but ultimately pointless. Nothing comes of this exchange, as the lawyer exits the story, and the other student remains a whistleblower.
Stealing School is full of revealing vignettes, but with such a great quantity, more than half of them don’t justify the time they take up. In a film this fast-paced, every scene counts.
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Compounding the sense of wasted time are unnecessary breaks for comedy. From fixation on a witness’ erotic fan-fiction to a ghost-writer’s bizarre visual coding as a sex worker, the effort to break up the tension with comedy comes from a place of fear, rather than intention. Fear that there isn’t enough to keep the audience engaged, that the tribunal is too serious or taxing, requiring regular opportunities to relax the tension. Whether the jokes were written into the first draft of the script, or forced by a studio, they are completely divorced from the tone of the film, relying on cringe comedy and surprise.
Stealing School isn’t flawless, but it is a surprisingly nuanced story, wherein a college student can be both the victim and a main player in the narrative. The smartest choice Li Dong made was to end the film with April, who is acquitted by the tribunal. She shares a cigarette with Keith as the two wait for a bus, Keith beaten, April on top. Every needless thread is forgotten, and a sigh can finally be released, shared between the audience and April.