The Catholic School is an Italian film based on true-crime events, which follows three boys from a prestigious all-boys Catholic high school in Rome who commit a heinous crime that shocks their classmates and society. The film is now streaming on Netflix.
Story
The Catholic School revolves around the lives of students at an all-boys Catholic high school known for its privileged upper-middle-class boys.
The story explores both the positive and negative aspects of the school in the 1970s. The way the students think and the influence the elite class has over the school’s administration gives us an insight into the lives of the boys from the elite class.
The narrator, Edoardo, paints the Catholic school as a great breeding environment for dysfunctional models of masculinity, with students always seeking to outdo one another with aggressive behaviors and displays of chauvinism.
The school, which is viewed as an excellent environment for their children’s education and development, suddenly crumbles under the weight of the Circeo massacre, one of the most heinous crimes of the time.
Three boys, Angelo, Andrea, and Gianni, from Rome’s privileged elite classes, perpetrate a crime that turns the school and the entire community upside down.
Performances
The cast of The Catholic School delivers great performances, particularly Emanuele Maria Di Stefano as Edoardo Albinati and Benedetta Porcaroli as Donatella, who are powerful in their understated elegance. They both play significant roles in the story, making their characters more believable and adding intrigue to the film.
Luca Vergoni as Angelo Izzo, Giulio Pranno as Andrea Ghira, and Francesco Cavallo as Gianni Guido, all deliver strong performances as the pure evil characters of the perpetrators.
Other actors, such as Guido Quaglione as Stefano Jervi and Andrea Lintozzi Senneca as Gioacchino Rummo, who play the students, help in keeping the film together and add to the cast’s strength.
Positives
The Catholic School gives an insightful glimpse into the lives of upper-middle-class boys who attended the school’s isolated environment, as well as the circumstances that motivated them to commit such a horrible act.
Furthermore, it is a stunning narrative about the dark side of human nature and the lengths people can go to when they feel trapped and tormented.
The premise of the film is intriguing, especially for those who appreciate films that dive deeply into the minds of killers.
Negatives
The entire storyline is split into timelines prior to the massacre, which jumps around and has no clear order, making the underlying chronology of events difficult to follow and distracting from the main subject.
While it’s fascinating to observe how the female characters navigate an oppressive, hyper-masculine culture, it’s unfortunate that Donatella and Rosaria get so little attention, which focuses solely on the mechanics of their torment and misery.
Verdict
Overall, The Catholic School is a hard-hitting thriller that neither makes a statement nor offers any type of atonement, but instead simply provides an insight into what transpired during the Circeo Massacre in 1975. It’s not for the faint of heart because it’s an intense and unusual viewing experience. It will not entertain you in the typical sense, but it will be a chilling film that you will not soon forget.
The Catholic School
Director: Stefano Mordini
Date Created: 2022-09-14 12:30
3.5
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