| RATING: | 100% |
| FORMAT: | DVD |
A brilliantly impressionistic, wonderfully funny and emotionally-realistic film concerning the often angst-ridden and instantly-changeable libidos of White Western teenagers. (Also hinted-at are sexual relationships between pupils and staff.)
Like Peanuts, the younger kids here are wise beyond their years – to great comic effect. They take life as it comes - in their stride - and possess an innate sense that the world is more logically ordered than grown ups pretend.
Director Bill FORSYTH’s true, distinctive genius lies in his acceptance of the superiority of women over men. The failure to understand this explains most of the male sexual insecurities on display here. His alter ego here (Gregory) proves that women are to be admired, but never worshipped, as his emotional arc transports him from awed spectator to intimate devotee. Women’s matter of factness can be very alarming to men (who pretend to denigrate romance) – especially if the men are not used to it. And even more especially for those men tainted by a too-solid diet of macho Hollywood he-men trying to overpower women with their alleged virility.
The humor of this delightful movie springs ultimately from the fact that most men have been awkward with women at sometime in their lives. The subject matter thus approaches universality as well as detailing how playfully-cruel girls can be to boys when the girls intuit this awkwardness.
Virtually plotless and limited in its characterization, this movie allows its audience to impose their own characters on the very common situations and experiences shown. An understated masterpiece.
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