The Catholic School

It's difficult to see why The Catholic School needed to be made. It doesn't sit right that a story based on a heinous real-life crime implies that hideous acts of violence committed by teenage boys are attributable to the education they received at an elite parochial school. The movie is based on a prize-winning novelized version of the events written by Edoardo Albinati, who went to the title school, which he lists as a co-conspirator to the criminals along with families, fascism, and, mostly, the "requirements" of masculinity. Each of these boxes are dutifully ticked off in the movie, but no real connections are made between them and the barbarous acts that ensue. An unsafe, treacherous, violent society is inevitable, according to this view, a premise the movie scarcely questions (one or two gentle boys serve as exemplars of niceness).

Apart from its confusing structure and the lack of a main character, the movie's worst crime is that it seems designed to let the boys off the hook. A religious institution is to blame. Hypocrite parents are to blame. Priests who solicit sex workers are to blame. A corrupt society with fascist tendencies is to blame. A narrator explains that he can't be himself; he always has to say he agrees with the dominant and crude others to be accepted by the crowd. If he doesn't, he exposes his weakness, and that will make him a victim instead of an accepted member in good standing. But this is the framework of adolescence everywhere, and it doesn't automatically come with built-in rape and murder. It takes courage to say no and refuse to go along, a point that is never made here. Instead, straight from the book, it quotes, "Being born a boy is an incurable disease." For the most part, this just feels like an excuse for lingering voyeuristic views of naked girls with bruised breasts and faces. Women here are all ineffective in their lives, "evil" temptresses who deserve contempt, subservient and unhappy wives seeking sex with younger men or enduring the flings of a homosexual husband. It's a grim life shown here: You're either a bullying, poisonous male or a surrendered victimized woman.