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.
