Notte prima degli esami

"Notte Prima Degli Esami" is for the most part a teen movie, but a great one indeed. It depicts the last days of high school of a group of friends before the final exam (maturità). I always love the first scene, when Luca do what is the dream of every student: to tell his hated teacher what he really think about him, the relationship that grows between them and then the very final scene of the movie (I won't spoil it!). Most of the themes dealt are typical of comedies like this: love, coming of age, friendship, various accidents, but are presented in a way which really feel true. Most of the character are not really developed but are enjoyable anyway. Some dialogs are really funny and well written. But the two things that makes this movie great are the ones that makes it enjoyable to two different audience: the ones who were young in the '80's, the time when Notte Prima Degli Esami is set, who can appreciate the great soundtrack and many subtle details, and the ones who are about the same age of the characters now. I made the "Maturità" exams three years ago, and every time I see this movie it always reminds me the emotions that I felt those days, because it just feels so true: the anxiety, the accidents, the stress; but more than over the friendship that bound together me and my friends in those days just like the characters in "Notte Prima Degli Esami"!

First of all, and just to put all cards on the table, this movie is nothing exceptional, nor an outstanding masterpiece... it is simply a nice movie on a lot of classic problems teenagers are facing when passing from adolescence to adult age. And if you are getting close (or just entered) your thirties you will absolutely enjoy a lot of reference to the late 80s music and way of life because one of the best ideas they had when writing the screenplay has been to move the story back of about 25 years. And notice the performance of Giorgio Faletti as the high-school teacher, he is a nearly perfect mix of comic and tragedy. Definitively worth a view!

Saw the film in my oral Italian class (sadly the last one, as the course will finish in two weeks), this time due to the fact that the screen shrank dramatically (we moved to a shabbier classroom), so I have to be more focus as to see clear what was happening on the screen (my eyesight reduces gradually), as in the film there are a dozens of characters (in a small screen, Italians look so alike each other) and I must not bypass the subtitles at the same time.

A simple, nice comedy of teenagers coming-of-age with a nostalgic reminiscence of '80s. Without too much ambition and ostentations. Even though most characters are not all well developed, everything seems real and natural (in a way), not pushed by force.

The time before Italian high school exams, like China's university entrance exam, a milestone in a teenager's life, also a transition from teenager to adulthood, a critical time which will influence one's entire life inevitably. Apart from school life, love at first sight (though not reciprocal), friendship, cheating (messing around with girlfriend's younger sister), pot, an unrequited love, a divorced family, a senile love story, even death (again I doubt it's necessity here), are all tangled altogether, I must say writers have really exerted studious effort to make it suitable for all demography. This film was a huge domestic success that year and of course a sequel derived from it was produced in 2007 (Notte Prima Degli Esami: Oggi) and predictably failed to match its precedent's quality.

The film also reminds me of Totto L'amore Che C'e (2000), another Italian film about adolescence (with a '70s background) I watched several months ago, nostalgia still is a trend now (at least in Italian cinema), DURAN DURAN and QUEEN, or LADY GAGA and DRAKE, which is better? To tell the truth, I'm so eager to experience the period when the latter will have become a history as well.

I think this movie is perfect! It's not a masterpiece, of course, but it was never supposed to be. It's a simple movie about teenagers, about high-school, about growing up. But it perfectly catches the atmosphere of the late 80s! It's nice and funny, without ever being banal (which often happens in this kind of movies). The young actors created characters that are real and not just a stereotype! It's like the Italian "Breakfast Club"! Watching this movie, it was like going back in time of 20 years: the music, the haircut, the clothes, the cars... That's why I would recommend it also to not-Italian people, because this movie gives a realistic idea of how was living in Italy in the "Duran-Duran era"! ;)

I put 7 because I loved it when I watched it around 18 and going through my final exams in high school. I love the references to the 80s, the movie is funny and there are some witty parts as well, really relatable if you know something about Italian culture and went through the final exams, the costumes and music are beautiful. Giorgio Faletti does an incredible job representing the evil liceo teacher. It's basically the only movie I can stand with Nicolas Vaporidis, but I think the movie would have been better with another actor, I don't like him at all, especially the way he seems to eat words while he speaks