Miss Diana Watts leads what Henry David Thoreau called a life of "quiet desperation." The angst-ridden high school English teacher has recently moved from the East Coast to Texas where she is preparing her AP students for their college entrance exams. But she crosses the line by getting involved with one of her bright students, the brash young Eric Tull, leading her deeper and deeper into the vortex of despair.

A shortcoming of the film was that by opening scene, the affair has already begun. As we pick up things in midstream, one has to wonder what Miss Watts was thinking in starting this extracurricular relationship.

It is also not clear why her life is so vapid of meaning. If it was a bad experience on the East Coast, it was never explained in the film. She has good colleagues at school and a supportive roommate in Sophia, who introduces to other men. But by the midpoint of the film, her involvement with Eric was turning into an obsession.

The actress playing Miss Watts was successful in capturing the character's anxiety. She never seemed to be truly enjoying Eric's company. By contrast, the carefree young man seemed to be having a whale of a time and doing a better job than Miss Watts of keeping their "little secret." He actually appeared to be the more "mature" adult.

Any sense of security for Miss Watts began to collapse on a trip to Eric's family farm, where the foreman James appears unannounced. But this was nothing compared to her complete meltdown of visiting Eric at his home late in the evening and being identified by Eric's dad.

The film's denouement seemed incomplete with Miss Watts lying on a motel room bed as the world around her begins to collapse with a phone call from her principal. She did not yet realize that she had not yet reached rock bottom, which will not be a comfy motel bed, but a hard mattress and an orange jumpsuit in the penitentiary.

Well, when you sit down to watch a movie like the 2013 movie "A Teacher" you know that you are in for something rather grotesque really. I mean, with the things that this movie is based upon, it just isn't going to be a happy and feel-good movie.

I sat down to watch it to get to know more about the events behind the actual things that happened, so I wasn't expecting a movie that focused that much on the actual sex parts between the adult and the minor - the teacher and the student. Sure, I knew that this was the thing the movie was based upon, the very inappropriate relationship between a teacher and a student, and the abuse of position and such. But writer and director Hannah Fidell was just focusing way too much on actually showing the intimate sex scenes between the two. It just made the movie feel unnecessarily sleazy. This could have been done more tactful by showing things leading up to the sex and then not showing the actual sexual act. It was just too much, and it made it even more cringeworthy than it had to be.

I must admit that the focus on the sex parts was just taking away so much from the movie for me, because it was not what I sat down to watch. I had hoped to watch something about the relationship, the thing that drove the teacher and the student to do this, and such, not actually sitting through all that sex.

It should be said that the acting done by Lindsay Burdge (playing Diana Watts, the teacher) was really good. She put on a very believable performance, and I must say that taking on such a role to play a character such as Diana Watts was just bold, and I applaude the actress for that accomplishment and for having the guts to do that.

As in terms of entertainment, then "A Teacher" was ultimately a lukewarm movie. For me, it was the pointless and unnecessary sex interactions show on the screen between the teacher and student that just brought the movie down to a sleazy level, and thus took away a lot of worth from the movie actually.

My rating of "A Teacher" lands on a five out of ten stars. While the movie deals with a very disturbing and just downright wrong topic, the movie just didn't feel wholehearted with writer and director Hannah Fidell at the helm.

This is a film in A Teacher that is nudging itself, trying to be set free from the restraints and the shortcomings of the finished product. The film trying to break free is a deep, involved character study on a teacher-student relationship that functions because of deep conversation and a mutual understanding between parties. The film we get is an interesting albeit mostly flat examination of an unremarkable teacher-student affair that strides along with sporadic hardships and ends in predictable calamity.

Hannah Fidell wanders into mumblecore territory here, as she directors and pens the film about Diana Watts (Lindsay Burdge),a high school English teacher, in her thirties or so, who has been flirting and hanging around with student Eric Tull (Will Brittain). The two hang out frequently - mostly in each others homes so being spotted in public isn't possible - and both enjoy each others company, personality, and intimacy. It doesn't take long, however, for Diana's paranoia to nearly get the best of her, as she tries to keep their relationship closeted, even as Eric begins to turn the other cheek to her at some points.

Immediately, this is a story that needs to be told, and this film ostensibly will humanize and maybe justify a teacher-student relationship. However, Fidell unfortunately keeps things too heavily nuanced to be insightful and too subtle to evoke much commentary or humanity. There isn't much to Diana or Eric, and their relationship seems more existent because it's a taboo and it's not normative. There's no real indicator on why they're together in the first place. We don't see why Eric has captured her eye, as he is just a typical, faceless high school teenager that comes to class everyday, does his work, and is quietly anxious sexually. There's no justification as to why Diana would want to date a student, or Eric in particular, seeing as if someone found out it could irreparably scar her reputation and put her out of a job.

The film I was hoping A Tacher would be featured extensive dialog to develop each character, dialog in the way of both of them talking about why they like each other enough to carry out a dangerous relationship under the noses of classmates and the school administration, and had deeply intimate, satisfying sex. This would be a four star film. The film we have here is one with minimal dialog in the way of characters, a shallow, limited view on why these two would want to be together, and relatively simple sex scenes captured by a grim camera that knows no color scheme other than black or very, very gray.

Having said all this, the film does in fact feature a strong lead performance by Lindsay Burdge, whose teacher character is made a sympathetic character, even with out much develop towards her. We can see that she thinks something of this relationship - whatever that may be - and she would be pained deeply if something wrong were to happen with it. If the film didn't have Burdge at the center, at least trying to provide some sort of clarity the character's motivations in this relationship, this would've been a complete misfire.

A Teacher is a serviceable, but overly-simple look at a subject that needs strong care and attention to be made human. The characters should've been more identifiable, the sex should've been more powerful and shocking considering the age gap, and the drama should've been thicker. The only thing I thought A Teacher was doing, by the end of it, was simply trying to push transgressive boundaries for the sake of doing so; not because it had something genuinely enlightening or strong to say.

Starring: Lindsay Burdge and Will Brittain. Directed by: Hannah Fidell.