Liceenii

after Declarație de dragoste and Extemporal la dirigenție, it is basis of ambitious project. high school is not only place of life, passions, adventures and confrontations between teachers but scene for ideological drops. it is a good movie and it must be OK in condition of its time. because more than mirror for teenagers life , it is lesson about freedom at different levels. and, for present, testimony of refuges in dark period. it is nice, smart and interesting. for cast, presence of children of great names in Romanian theater, hopes yesterday, important names today - Ștefan Bănică, Tudor Petruț, Mihai Constantin are few examples - and for fresh air . nothing fake, nothing strange. personal histories and levels of self definition.

I only saw this movie this week, which could mean about twenty years late. But no. Not too late. I would say, just in time. It brings back the time, when I went to school. It brings back exactly the way it happened. Yes, it was hard, sometimes brutal, sometimes grotesque. But those years were so beautiful for so many of us. And this movie manages to show us all the good things, but none of the bad ones we remember from that time. Yes, the acts seem pale or even fake sometimes. But only we know, why it does. We know and we feel it. And we are grateful to the makers of this movie. Most of those who will read these words have no idea, what it took to make a movie like this in the late eighties in Romania. One risked not only his/her career, but the very existence. People were actually imprisoned for not giving up artistic ideals. Yet, this movie works! But only for those, who had to "privilege" to grow up during the communist era in eastern Europe. You can find breath-taking sights with a Lonely Planet book in your pocket, but it takes years of day-to-day life among the locals, to start understanding what you see. The same way, one would have to go back in time, go back to Romania, to understand, to feel this movie.

An excellent movie. Maybe it's relevant only for ex-communists countries, because the action takes place in a communists country, and you can see lots of those elements. If you ignore all this, it reminds you of your days as a high school teenage. Beside that the actors like Tamara Buciuceanu or Ion Caramitru are very good actors and they fit being teachers. Comparing to US movies on this subject (high school teenage), it's not a big difference and the main ideas are pretty much the same, the understanding teacher, loved by students and the sever teacher who scares students, or the love stories between the students are all seen in US movies. But the particularity of this movie is that it's more closer to me or to other ex-communists countries because my days being a high school student are pretty much like those in movie. That's why I rated this movie with 10/10

Nowadays, this movie is being looked at with detrimental eyes. I just have to admit that I had this very attitude until today, when I had the chance to watch the movie again.

I've read now how the director chose a soundtrack and found out that the lyrics we all know - and consider them as naive or even foolish - provoked several arguments and were about to be censored. It wasn't comfortable at all to do a film about the 'madding' teenagers together with their hopes and beliefs. Yet the script hasn't touched any problems but the ways of building relationships between students, love matters and a few nasty things the children were doing (although those seem to us as no big deals today, they were biting against the regime of those years).

It is obvious (and not only to me) that the film hasn't got any real merit with the way it was directed and none of the actors tells apart (although there were involved great performers, they weren't given the occasion to be remarkable here). I found that the real value is held in the way the script came to reduce all the emotional tension of the characters altogether in some simple schemes without dissolving them into caricatures. I'll take for support the reveries that conceal Mihai at all times when he thinks it'd fit to approach Dana. I think the most interesting moment in the movie is the very end - the flash just before the two kiss. The director Corjos tried to prove by this that it would have been pointless to let the action prolong, while we could guess much of the subsequent minutes. (As a matter of fact, the two haven't actually kissed not a single time during the shooting.)

Having all these in mind, I marked the film with 7 stars out of 10, and don't say I'm too demanding - just think that I've started from 1 to 10 by increasing the score and not the other way round. I mostly hope this will be read by those who had a bad opinion towards the movie - maybe they'll have their minds changed a little.

Times really have changed, that's for sure. Unity is gone and so, who cares for more but himself? Too few, that's for sure. This is the only piece of fact I was able to extract intact from the film. The only intriguing idea. The rest is easily forgettable.

The story itself did make me raise my eyebrows in disagreement, but I can hardly criticize things which I could not live through. As a whole, the story isn't even the real issue. It will make you smile, grin and maybe think a bit, but I consider this to be a film for the youth, a message to a certain extent. It's easy to connect to it, in this regard, but I fear the movie falls far short of delivering to its full potential. The fault lies at the actors, who are terribly stiff and almost repugnant in their ignorance. The closest to being an actor comes the one who plays Ionica, the troublesome best friend of lead actor Stefan Banica. By far the worst acting performance I have seen in a long, long while is the one of Oana Sarbu who is so distant and so lacking expressivity that all her charm and beauty can not compensate enough.

In total contrast to the disastrous acting is the main theme which simply reaches exhilarating heights. In a funny kind of way, that is. It generally gives the monotonous scenes some flavor and were it not for this, I don't think I could've bared to watch the whole movie.

Sure, it isn't something you'd necessarily be proud of. I wouldn't. Still, it's fine enough not to bore to the core and, despite those terrible acting performances, I'd suggest it for a beautiful summer day. I suppose it's got an undeniable charm - innocence and youth in the system, or something like that. 5.5/10