The Substitute (1993)

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Good start, but then it gets ruined

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

This surprising film made for Paramount television includes some startling cinematic strokes and a phenomenal performance by Amanda Donohoe. She plays not just a good teacher but a great one. Capable to inspire her students injecting in their souls a sense of being. Discovering that her husband is cheating on her with one of her students, something inside her snaps. She kills her husband and his lover, burns the house down and disappears. We find her some time later in another school becoming a substitute teacher with a brand new identity. That's all I'm going to say, those are the first few minutes of the movie. Her new identity is not going to cover completely her self loathing. Amanda Donohoe never look so beautiful, so strong or so vulnerable. We are aware of her internal struggle between the goodness that she always nurtured and the evil that made a home inside her. The film has extraordinary moment of lyrical beauty. Some extraordinary faces and sequences filled with a strange, uncomfortable tension. Some other moments seem shot by someone else. Stiff and unconvincing. But what's good is really terrific and makes the film a worthy case for re-evaluation/ 8 out of 10

**SOME SPOILERS** You can't deny the fact that Laura Ellington, Amanda Donohoe,is a great teacher in both looks, looking like a very glamorous classy and much younger Margot Kidder, and in motivating her students in her high-school English study class when she brings out their inner most and creative feelings when their made to recite the great classics of 17th 18th 19th and even 20th Century English Literature. The only drawback that Laura has, and it's a big one,is that she's a fugitive from justice in the murder and arson of her cheating husband Doug, Martin Martinuzzi, and his lover Claire Bilino, Justine Priesttey. This happened back in Albany New York when she was Gayle Richards the year before.With a new identity and new job at the Barker Spring Minn. high school Laura takes her job very seriously and makes sure her students do the same thing by getting them off their butts and in their books. Before you, and the school administration, know it the worst bunch of Barker Spring High students become candidates for Rhodes Scholarship's due to Laura's exceptional teaching methods.At the school Laura takes a very strong liking to one of her students. The sensitive, he's trying to get over the recent tragic death of his mom, and very handsome 18 year-old Josh Wyatt, Dalton James. One night running into Josh she invites him over at her place where in no time at all seduced the startled and at the same time happy young man. Telling Josh to keep the affair with her to himself Laura really messes up his mind later when she starts to have an affair with Josh's widowed father Ben,Eugune Robert Glazer. This so greatly upsets the young man that it causes Josh to fall behind in his studies and at the same time develop a number of serious psychological problems that just about destroys his social life.Everything goes very well for Laura until she's suddenly called into Principal Beatty, Patricia Grge, office and told that the the teacher that she's been replacing a Mrs. Fisher (Sheila Patterson), who was thought by everyone was going to retire, was coming back to teach in the school and that Laura would have to be let go. Sneaking into Mrs. Fisher's house Laura get's the elderly woman, who looks like she's in her 80's, to have a fatal heart-attack by sticking her pet cat into the oven roasting the poor kiddie to a crisp. Laura doesn't know that she was seen by one of her students the class loudmouth Ryan Westernberg, Mark Wahlberg, entering Mrs. Fisher's house the night that she died. Big mouth Ryan now threatens to tell the cops all he knows unless Laura puts him, who has the worst academic scores in school, on the list to receive a full scholarship!Meeting Ryan outside his home Laura instead of agreeing to give the blackmailing creep a scholarship slices his throat open with a broken whiskey bottle, that he was drinking out of and offered her a free swig, leaving Ryan unconscious and bleeding to death. Josh going to check out the local police criminal database finds out about Laura's past as the fugitive murderess Gayle Richards. With the walls now starting to close in on Laura she becomes more and more unstable and unpredictable.The movie leads up to a double attack on both Josh's father Ben and girlfriend Jenny, Natasha Gegson Wagner, by the now insane Laura as her past, as Gayle Richards, finally catches up with her. With her ending up trapped on the roof of the high school confronted by Josh with the Baker Spring PD surrounding the place.***SPOILERS*** Trying to talk Laura into giving herself up Josh is unable to keep her from slipping and falling to her "death" which looked so ridicules since Laura fell no more then ten feet without as much as even mussing up her hair much less breaking her neck. We later learn that Laura indeed survived her fall as we see her applying for a new job, with a blond wig, as a teacher at another school. We can only hope that the students there don't suffer the same fate that those, as well the the teachers students families and administrators, suffered at Baker Springs High.

Amanda Donohoe's performance is the highlight of this TV film.Gale had it all. Students who loved her and an adoring husband. Apparently, he found another love and when he was caught in the act, he is killed along with his lover.Gale runs off to Minnesota and begins a new teaching career. With Mrs. Fisher, the regular teacher, out on sick leave and probably taking early retirement, Laura Ellington, her new name, gets a long-term position and works with extremely difficult youngsters.She now looks like a witch and is quite a character. When Mrs. Fisher announces her surprise return, Laura does away with her so as to get the teaching position permanently.The film, as is the case with many others of this type, begins to deteriorate as the bodies pile up. Laura goes to bed with one of the students and then takes up with his widowed father. Mark Wahlberg plays a troubled student. When he follows Ms. Ellington to Mrs. Fisher's house, she kills him.I'll stop here because the ending is contrived ...but wild. Our school systems stink but a teacher like this, wow!

As awkward as this film is, there are moments that can only be described as, sublime. The moments are pinpointed by faces. If you read the film through the faces of its characters you'll have a memorable experience. The pain and anger in Amanda Donohue's face is as entertaining and shattering as anything Bette Davis has ever done. Mark Whalberg ambles down into the film scene with a bang, looking straight into the camera, inviting us to "get busy". The faces of the students, Molly Parker and Martin Cummins among them, tell us, in beautiful close ups, how much their murderous teacher has done for them. Then the teacher tells them how much they mean to her, we see the kids faces from above as her point of view. It is just wonderful. Last but not least is the amazing score by Gerald Gouriet (Madame Souzatska, Seeds of Tragedy) All in all I had the feeling that a genial mind was at work here, but chained to some kind of wall of mediocrity. As rarities go, this is the "rariest". Worth the trip.