Bad Education (R-Rated Edition) Reviews

bad education is a good movie. it twists and turns in ways that i didn't really see coming although its not a shocking "oh we totally got you" sort've thing. it shows a story that has different people who went different ways, their interconnections, and then all the lies and deceit as they try to work their own way through whatever life they've made for themselves.

two young boys in a religious prep-school fall in love. the priest who are in charge of them are a gang of child molesting villains. split up the two boys don't meet again. much later in life the one boy who was expelled, so the other could be kept as a personal play thing, has become a known director. another man shows up claiming to be the boy who was left. he has written a script which tells his whole story. he also claims to be an actor and wants the lead part. however the director knows its not him, and confirms it while also finding out that the boy he loved had died and the man claiming to be him was his brother. yet he lets him do the part so he can have sex with him...or so it seems. at the very end of filming the priest who wanted the boy meets the director and tells him how the story really ended. the boy had become a junkie drag queen who stole from the family and blackmailed the priest for drug money.

there is not much to like about these characters in the end. whatever innocence they had, whatever empathy we have for them, is undermined in one way or another.

and i'm still trying to understand the end...a note (the last bit of writing the boy/junkyman had written) is given to the director. it says "i think i've succeeded." at what? its a loaded statement and yet it doesn't have much meaning here. or maybe it does but it felt misstated. maybe success was getting the money from blackmailing the priest to pay for his/her gender change surgery and checking into rehab. so we're supposed to be left with a feeling of what could have been. i didn't feel it.


good movie. worth watching. quite a lot to enjoy. some reservations about it though. it just didn't wrap up with any emotional connection. all the potential shown garish and bland at the same time.

(6/10)