Liceenii

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.

The movie is a highschool love story involving two young freshmen. Mihai, just arrived from a province city to the capital Bucharest falls in love with Oana, a young and modern girl. Their love story is full of passion and naturalesse and almost makes you cry. I wold say the movie is a young version of the classic Love Story.

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.

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

As it happens, I was an assistant director to this movie - so my comments will provide some really valuable inside info.

Not surprisingly at all, the script was quite lousy. George Sovu, an education department inspector, was trying his hand at screen-writing, careful not to offend the communist authorities... I remember so well how exasperated Stefan Banica was - during the rehearsals, he was telling me: "I should paste on my brow the Communist Party status!"

...But what really saved the movie, was Nicolae Corjos' talent - his unique feeling of making it true. While shooting the most sensitive scenes, he used to say: "Now, silence, please... we must concentrate... and a sort of magic gets created, helping our actors to play their roles..." So, it's not surprising at all that this movie had such a box office success. Nick Corjos really knew how to talk to his audience.