But Forever in My Mind

This is a colorful, bright, energetic film, saturated with teenage ennui. It all comes rushing back at you, how everyday teenage life is the stuff of high drama, all the time, on all channels.

The framework is a student rebellion, and a subplot is the reactionary attitudes of one boy's parents, big players, evidently, in the student riots of '68. The teenagers' contempt for adult society is so automatic it's almost an institution. It's funny, and a little depressing, to watch these kids make the same stupid assumptions you did X number of years ago. You realize they're unavoidable, these rites of passage.

While it feels like a modern, Italian John Hughes movie, it delivers more than you'd expect from a movie so described. There are sharp, trenchant observations about life and what we expect from it. Some of the innocent questions a boy asks his older brother are so silly they're profound. I especially enjoyed the right-on portrayal of the boys being just as gossipy as the girls, if not more so.

I hadn't expected to like this movie as much as I did. It's sweet, funny, and worthwhile.

"Come te nessuno mai" is another teen film among so many. It could easily be an American teen film, only it's spoken in Italian, and politics plays a more important role than in their American counterparts (there's no left x right in the USA - American teenagers, as portrayed by American films, are more concerned with status and clothes. But politics is not really important for the story of "Come te nessuno mai" - it is just a game played by these children of well-to-do parents. If they were in USA they would be cheering for a basketball player.

Another significant difference between "Come te nessuno mai" and its American counterparts is that the acting is much better and the romantic scenes have really a romantic feel.

All in all "Come te nessuno mai" is entertaining, funny and sometimes moving, but it is a disposable movie - it's easy to see and easier to forget.

Maybe one day there will be a director able to give a deeper portrayal of the teen world. Teenagers are not the cardboard figures usually shown in the teen films. They deserve better films.

Many of you who will watch this movie will not understand it. Yes, it is a very simple movie on the surface: young kids live their lives through school, love, troubles, and coping with growing up... all this is great, but you need to understand the culture. This movie was made in Italy, Rome to be exact which is very important. I saw this movie for the first time when i was in high school in 1999... i went with my friends from high school (by the way i'm from Rome too) and it was like seeing images from my own life. The divisions between clothing explained at the beginning of the movie are very real and go deeper than just what you wear, but what you believe in and what you stand for. The taking over of the school is not an excuse for sex, as other people have said about the movie, but is a way of showing that we matter, (yes i have participated in two of these myself). As it said in one part of the movie "I don't want to look back and see I've made crap of my life, like everything has been already said and done". That's why they do it, because they want to matter... the sex and love just come with the growing up and coming to terms with one's life. Even now, as a twenty-something I still look back at this movie (which has been released in America under the name -like forever in my mind-) with melancholia and joy that i could have my youth portrayed so realistically and truthfully as in this movie, no one could have done it better. Too bad many of you might not ever get to really appreciate it beyond the simple story it's telling.

Check out also the movie "Ovosodo".

COME TE NUSSUNO MAI translates from Italian to "like you anyone ever" or one's first experiences in life are unique solely to you, never having been experienced by anyone in history. BUT FOREVER IN MY MIND is simply a quote lifted from this film about the agonies and ecstasies of adolescence and to fully appreciate the story from the adolescent aspect, the Italian title is far more appropriate.

As written by brothers Gabriele and Silvio Muccino (also Gabriele directs and Silvio stars) this radiant little film covers a day in the lives of Italian highschool kids caught up in a youthful rebellion against their school's policies while at the same time sorting out the nascent changes in their burgeoning sexuality. The boys languish over their expected, anxiously awaited first physical encounter while the girls (at times on split screen just to make the comparison more strongly) relate their feelings about first time encounters with the boys. The two stories run parallel: student riots involve the police and of course eventually their parents, the two sources of authority the kids naturally challenge, and the taste of honey one of the boys achieves which becomes a gossiped, bloated misdirected moment of braggadocio that eventually leads to the serendipitous beautifully innocent discovery of teenage love.

The young boys include Silvio (Silvio Muccino) and his talkative confident Ponzi (Giuseppe Sanfelice), the one sexually active lad Martino (Simone Pagani) while the girls include the experienced Valentina (Giulia Carmignani) partner of Martino, and Claudia (Giulia Steigerwalt), Silvio's longtime friend who dreams of a relationship beyond friendship. The remainder of the cast (especially Enrico Silvestrin and Giulia Ciccone who are splendid as Silvio's 'ex-hippie' parents) is quite strong. The parallel between the physical rebellion in the school incident and the hormonal rebellion within this collected group's bodies is a true sense of cinematic metaphor and makes for a fast-paced, humorous, touching coming of age story that is a joy to watch! In Italian with English subtitles. Grady Harp

This movie is funny and most of the humor is very very subtle. It is all about being a perfect adolescent (spelling!!). The movie is real in the sense that the characters are exist very much in the real world. You could easily associate your self and your friends with at least one of the characters in the movie. It is about a teen undergoing a whole gamut of emotions in the matters of dealing with parents, siblings, friends and especially issues concerning love. The movie also shows, very blatantly in fact, how parents are very uncomfortable when their kids behave like they did when they were young. It has issues like unrequited love and adolescent infatuations. Most of the humor comes from how a girl and a guy interpret a same scenario in entirely different terms...