The Night Before the Exams (2006)

The Night Before the Exams arrives from 2006, which is to say from a period when an Italian teen comedy could concern itself entirely with the terror of the esame di maturita and the logistics of a summer romance. Luca insults his literature teacher, Martinelli, on the last day of school, then learns that Martinelli will sit on his examination board. Worse, the girl he pursues turns out to be Martinelli's daughter. The film follows this arrangement through a Roman summer of 1989, soundtracked by Duran Duran and Europe, and it resolves with the gentle inevitability of a beach holiday.

On the matter of modern social consciousness, the record is silent. The cast is Italian and white throughout, and the film offers no remark on this, because it is a film about Romans in Rome. The female lead serves as a romantic objective and little else, and the screenplay has no interest in interrogating that arrangement, or any other arrangement. There is no economic critique, no environmental conscience, no engagement with race, no LGBTQ presence, no meditation on body image, no neurodivergent characterization, and no correction of the historical record. The film treats 1989 as a place to visit for the songs, not as a site for moral instruction.

Which leaves the lecturing. There is none. The audience is never scolded, never instructed, never asked to examine its own complicity in anything. Luca learns that his teacher is a person, which is the oldest lesson in the genre and is delivered here without a single raised finger. This is a modest, warm, unambitious picture, and it demands nothing of the viewer beyond two hours of nostalgia. We can only report the findings. The glass is swirled, held to the light, and set down again with nothing in it.