"Not One Less" Review

Not One Less is a movie about a thirteen year old girl who ends up being a substitute teacher for a tiny school in the mountains. She’s not very good at teaching or disciplining the students and just sort of let’s them run wild. She tells them to copy their lesson and they cannot leave until they do. After she tells them this, she sits on the front stoop and basically twiddles her thumbs. She does not really seem to care about the students. She seems to just be in it for the money. She will get fifty yuen at the end of the teaching period and an extra ten yuen if none of the students have left the school. An hour into the movie two of the students have left. One of them was recruited for a sports school and the other had to drop out to work. At first to me it seemed like she maybe cared that the student was not getting an education and that is why she was raising the money to travel to the city and look for him to bring him back to school, but she was just doing it to get the extra money. Teacher Wei was not very smart in her attempts to find the student in the city, but she was persistent, and eventually her message was broadcasted to the audience she wanted. However, during the time she was in the city, I was curious as to what was happening with the kids in the mountains. They were not getting an education while she was away. I thought the movie was interesting, I just do not really think she cared that much about her students. I liked the colored chalk at the end too. :)