Pi@LFF: Bad Education

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Pi@LFF is a series of reviews made by the Pi Culture team attending the 2019 BFI London Film Festival. In this article, Matilda Singer reviews Cory Finley’s dramatisation of a high school expenses scandal.

If there’s one film at this year’s London Film Festival made for student journalists, it’s Cory Finley’s Bad Education. In his second directorial role, Finley dramatises the Roslyn High expenses scandal of 2004, in which the superintendent of schools, Dr. Frank Tassone, and the business administrator, Pam Gluckin, siphoned over $11 million from the school accounts. 

While Gluckin (Allison Janney) treated herself to a house renovation in the Hamptons and filled her children’s stockings with expensive gifts, Tassone (Hugh Jackman) racked up charges on first class flights to London, real estate in the Long Island suburbs, and cosmetic procedures to maintain his meticulous appearance. Unrecognisable from his Wolverine days, Jackman is a vision of perfectly plucked eyebrows and shiny suits. 

Cut to the entrance of a sharp student reporter, whose first assignment is covering the $7.5 million ‘skybridge’ construction: an emblem of Roslyn High’s growing wealth and league table ascension. Rachel (Geraldine Viswanathan) gets the PR spiel from Dr. Tassone, and then some unasked-for advice: that her news story doesn’t have to be a puff-piece, because a good reporter can make a meaningful story out of anything. The delicious irony of this opening sequence is that Tassone’s own encouragement of investigative journalism becomes the basis of his downfall. 

Rachel digs through the financial records and is stunned – but in no doubt – about what she finds (high school math is enough to work out that two plus two does not equal five). How is it possible that the classroom ceilings leak but the school board can fork out millions for impressive construction work? What kind of company has a fake business address? Why does Gluckin’s son have a corporate credit card with the Roslyn logo? Once the story broke, it was picked up by national news outlets, ripping across the country as outraged parents decried their lack of trust in the public school system. But end credits remind us that the scandal was covered first and foremost by the school paper, the Hilltop Beacon. 

Jackman and Janney are the perfect villains to be cast in this dark comedy, and only the operatic score can match such a dramatic display of corruption and greed from two public service officials. While Gluckin’s actions are the most outrageous on paper – her fraudulent charges were reportedly double that of Tassone’s – the extent of the latter’s duplicity makes him truly sinister. 

Perhaps it’s obvious that everyone’s favourite superintendent is too good to be true, but I think his charm and quick wit may just win you over. Tassone is slick: he never forgets the name of a pupil, listens attentively to colleagues’ personal problems, and reads Charles Dickens for the mom’s book club. The gold wedding band he sports in memory of his ‘late wife’ not only elicits sympathy, it conveniently diverts personal questions. This sense of moral ambiguity is exactly what makes screenwriter Mike Makowsky’s script so clever. 

Given that Makowsky himself attended Roslyn High during the early noughties and saw the scandal unfold, it’s no surprise that the students are a key strand in this story. I can’t speculate about real events, but on screen, it’s all very Scooby-Doo. Gluckin’s eyes twitch as she begrudgingly hands over the keys in response to Rachel’s public information request, and when the police eventually gather evidence to convict Tassone and Gluckin, you can almost hear the pair of them saying ‘and I would have gotten away with it, if it wasn’t for those meddling kids…’. 

Pi writers look out - I’m booking us all tickets to see Bad Education when it’s released in the UK next year.