La scuola cattolica

La scuola cattolica is a bad film that mistreats a story that should have been handled with more care, or rather, that exploits it to gain more visibility. The film has nothing to say and, in an attempt to hide it, it crumples over an empty and confusing structure accompanied by a narrator's voice blurting out what appear to be introspective profundities. As an Italian, I already knew this case, and hoped it would be treated with more justice, as an attempt to really understand why what happened happened, and to give a voice to the victims of the case. Instead, it is not clear what the director wants to do, other than displaying a gratuitous attempt to shock, some vague form of social polemic, and pointless observations on religion.

I think that this is a solid and largely well done film. The acting is fine and the exposition of the family, school, and social life of the students who ultimately committed the Massacro del Circeo gives some food for thought. Some historical facts are missing so that the story told by the film may give a slightly biased impression, but this is normal for films of this kind that are based on real events but do not attempt to be documentaries, still somewhat problematic. I wouldn't rate the film as outstanding; if you read even just the official announcements about the film in advance, you will know where things are going (although I hadn't studied the story enough to know everything in advance, there was the odd little surprise), and the "rigid catholic school and disfunctional families bring forth disturbed characters" theme wasn't exactly done for the first time, but anyway, I could get something out of this. 7/10.

Groups of spoiled rich boys in their teens who appear to to flout the normal rules of the game, to push each other both physically and mentally until something snaps under the stress. The majority come from comfortable backgrouds where in most cases materialism replaces love, where it seems parents are quite happy providing they themselves can shirk most of their responsibilities towards their offspring. True, curfews are set, orders are given but generally there is NO check or follow-ups made to ensure rules aren't being broken. September 1975, 3 of the boys, Gianni Guido, Angelo Izzo and Andrea Ghira have made an agreement to kidnap and rape and/or murder two girls they vaguely know, Rosaria and Donatella. At the time, the Italian Penal Code only recognises RAPE as a MORAL crime NOT a Criminal one. They lay out their plans and begin to put them into action. The results are tragic for all concerned.

This movie is primarily meant as a rendition of a true murder and rape case, committed by some high school teens back in the seventies in Italy. But that story only pops up in the last 20 minutes of the movie. Before that we get to see a whole string of side-stories, all more or less around the various scholars of a chic catholic high school. I didn't quite grasp how all these stories should relate to the crime (apart from the fact that they mostly circle around the sexual curiosity of all those teens). A voice-over by one of the schoolboys constantly utters vague, unfathomable and pretentious profundities, of which it's equally unclear what the link with the crime is. The title of the movie seems to suggest that the fact that the school is catholic is essential to all the goings-on, but this is nowhere in the movie made concrete.

The sequence of the rapes and murder is pretty harsh and realistically done, with the two boys blood chillingly cold and almost clinical in their actions. This part of the movie is impressive, albeit hard to watch. But the motivation or reasons for the actions by the two are never revealed, these in fact came (at least to me) totally out of the blue. After more than an hour preliminary movie-time building-up to this climax, this is at least a bit disappointing.

To me this is at best an intriguing movie about a gruesome and senseless crime. And the settings to revive the 70's are flawlessly done. But there's too much that distracts from the pivotal story, which makes this an unbalanced and in the end disappointing movie.

The film seems to be a little bit boring in some parts, decent acting from some, bad from others. The real story of the murder hasn't been explicated well, a lot of missing parts that the plot needed hasn't been added to the work. However the picture and the good aesthetic of the 70's save this film from a worst vote.