Back to School – 5 American films on high-school life
School starts on September 14 - after so many months of uncertainty - a sign that we're slowly getting back to the old normal. In order to lighten the nostalgia surrounding the excitement of buying new backpacks and the habit of writing with chalk on blackboards, I thought of compiling a list of the best American films that explore the high school experience (leaving aside many of the popular titles that we are all embarrassed of having as guilty pleasures). Why American movies? Because, on the one hand, the long-known feuds between the popular, the rockers or the nerds are always more campy than the 1986 Romanian film The Graduates - and, on the other hand, the so-popular genre of the '80s reveals a simple and self-sufficient school, summarised in just a few common images (the school bell that always sounds the same, the classroom where paper planes fly around, the hallway where all students open their lockers at the same time, the gym where they're always playing basketball). The films below are not entirely devoid of the clichés of the genre, but have the quality of questioning them in various ways.
Journalist and film critic, with a master's degree in film critics. Collaborates with Scena9, Acoperișul de Sticlă, FILM and FILM Menu magazines. For Films in Frame, she brings the monthly top of films and writes the monthly editorial Panorama, published on a Thursday. In her spare time, she retires in the woods where she pictures other possible lives and flying foxes.
