Un bacio

Seen at the Movies That Matter film festival 2017 in The Hague. Disappointing, storytelling-wise as well as how the fantasies of main protagonists were visualized. The clearest example of the latter is Lorenzo's arrival at his new school. We see him drop his backpack and dance his way into the building with the other pupils applauding. Another example, not much better than the former, can be found in Lorenzo's dialogues with his dead brother.

Plot and developments overall are not involving, and as such not as moving as the film makers apparently had hoped for. The composition of the threesome is a bit artificial, seemingly only setup to expose and thus emphasize their differences, their sole binding factor being that all three were treated as outsiders by their peers.

The story around Blu does not receive the attention it deserves. It leaves unclear why she still hangs out with one of the guys who filmed her while she was sedated and seduced by him and his three friends, something that appears later to be a full-fledged gang-rape, less consented than Blu herself tells everyone repeatedly. The rest of the school has earmarked her as "easy to get", words like sl*t are graffiti-d on walls all over the area. The footage itself was not made public, yet the seduction was known all along by other means (gossip?? hearsay??). Near the end of the movie when Blu happens to see the whole footage and learns what really happened with her and the foursome "friends", it triggers her to take formal steps against them, together with her parents and eventually involving the police. How and why that developed is covered in only a few minutes, hence left us wondering.

When our three main protagonists are taking a swim at a deserted place outside, Lorenzo makes his move to Antonio and touches him, something that Antonio apparently does not take well and he leaves without saying anything, despite Blu calling after him to learn why he left. I cannot reveal further developments, in fear of spoilers. But in the end, also somewhat artificial, we see the very same scene where Lorenzo touches Antonio, with a totally different outcome, leaving us outguessing how it will develop. This is where the movie ends with showing the final credits, leaving us wondering again.

All in all, I feel a bit lost because of the generally positive reviews, by non-critics as well as critics. None of them even touches the objections I outlined above. In other words, this is a minority viewpoint. Most probably, my age (67) will be deemed the culprit.