El chico de la ultima fila was so good. However I think I prefer Dans la maison, the 2011 film based on the play. From what I recall (mind you, I watched it over 3 years ago), Dans la maison was more direct in a way. There are things, tricks, you can do with the camera that you can't quite do in theatre that help magnify the meta narrative feeling and thriller element of it all. Plus, I really like what they did with Raphael in the movie. The movie is also more "shocking" (so to speak), more fixed on the taboos that are being broken while the play is more interested in examining the ways in which the characters look at things.
The play drags a bit and loses itself in a lot of details (which, to be fair, is precisely the point, and it is literally criticized within the play) while the movie felt more fresh throughout. I also felt more repulsed by the teacher in the play compared to the movie. I don't know if it's because my memory fails me, or just because Fabrice Luchini just has that unassuming look to him, but I didn't remember the teacher being so incredibly unsympathetic.
There's an official recording of a performance here which I skimmed through while reading the play because I was very curious about how the set changes happen: in the play there aren't scenes, every moment flows into the next. On stage they adapt that by having different sets all within the exact same stage. Claudio acts, in a lot of ways, as a director of the scene. He commands the light, he makes the characters speak and stop speaking. My favorite thing was possibly the beginning: when Claudio is introduced, the actor walks from beyond the stage, from the very back of the audience. The audience are the rest of the students and he's been sitting on the back!
