Philip Barantini
Adolescence

"The thing everyone gets wrong when dealing with kids is considering them little adults. Made like us, but at a lower level. They talk like us, but a bit worse, think like us, but slightly less, that sort of thing. It's utter nonsense. They're not little versions of us. They're something else. They're a world. Completely different. They're like little visitors from another planet. The incredible and beautiful thing, the reason I chose this job, is that - every now and then - you manage to understand the language of that planet. And so you either show them the way to yours, or you don't, and you're left there, consumed by envy."
MC

So, how's it going? How are things? Can you survive yet another guide on how today's youth express themselves? Amazing stuff! Would we have ever suspected it? They have different codes. And secrets! For example, think about it for a moment, they listen to a song called Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. And we think it's about a drawing a girl did in elementary school about her friend Lucy! But actually, no. It says something different, perhaps...
Or they listen to Helter Skelter backwards. And they hear things...

I absolutely need to find a book. Silly. The title was something like the menabò, something like that. It came out around '77. It explained how young people (of that time) spoke. I was 13 or 14, a bit like the young fool in the film. It was hilarious reading that book. It was done during that summer with friends. It didn't get a single thing right. I'm still disturbed by the expression: ho l'elastico rotto. It meant your girlfriend lost her virginity. Never in my long life have I heard anyone express themselves like that.

But the book said it...

Or about ten years ago, when I asked a letters colleague to give me a synopsis of Anna col booster. Or one day here on Griglia street, when the whole lunch break was spent interpreting Ciny by Sferaebbasta (a te non ti pompa fra ti fa un pampero caused a clear division among the commentators).

Old stuff, undoubtedly. Today there are the youngsters. They speak a language all their own. That's never happened before! Buy the new manual!

And then... and then they kill! They kill their peers. They kill themselves! It's incredible. That's never happened before! In my time, there were indeed kids who died. But for serious reasons, like vandalizing a fascist poster! Or because they were shooting crap into their veins! And they definitely knew why! Not like today's kids. They can't even say why!

Well, the answer is simple. Every newspaper, every magazine provides it in the attached supplement. There's the internet! There's Instagram, there's Tik Tok! This thing they're banning for minors in many places. You know, it has frightening effects. In my day, nooooo. For instance, even a pope spoke out against rock music, the devil's herald...

So, in short, you must have understood (from the title more than anything). I watched Adolescence. All of it, on a Sunday afternoon. Four hours of reality. Filmed this way, like a reality show. Like a necessarily tiny Big Brother. About the story of a kid who killed a peer. Beneath it, perhaps, there's a story. About cyberbullying, revenge porn, things like that. It's not really clear. The aim isn't to investigate, to tell the story of that murder.

Then, the first two considerations, as everyone here on debasio likes, I'll move on to track by track.

One: Damn, I was sure it was in six episodes! So at the end of the fourth, I search for the fifth and think there's a problem. I check another site. Nothing. I go on Wikipedia. Noooo that's the end!?
Two: I don't know why, or maybe I do, but for all four episodes I think of a film. That few have seen and few remember. It's called K-pax.

On with the track by track (how we love it)!

Episode one: I've always dreamed of owning one of those contraptions the police use to break down doors. The film starts this way. And there's a more or less normal family on one side, on the other the SWAT team (as they said years ago). They take the kid. They take him away. Around the corner, where the station is. In my humble opinion, for being around the corner, it takes them a bit too long, but so be it. The kid is accused of killing his classmate. The father arrives. The first episode is all about the initial interrogation, the kid's detention. They show the dad a surveillance camera film. We don't see it. But there are few doubts. Yet the kid claims he's innocent.

Episode two: The most annoying (at least for me). The detective and his colleague go to the school the young fool attended. It's a middle school. I - always - call it the wrong school. I thank heaven that in 1992 when I could've, I chose to wait a year and not go there to teach. Generally, I'd slap everyone. The teachers, the students, truly everyone. They all seem like a bunch of idiots (with an i) to me. Particularly intolerable, in my view, is this thing where everyone is allowed to freak out without any consequence. Like, the girl is being questioned, she freaks out, starts yelling, and everyone says: oh poor thing! What the hell is that? In an important moment of the episode, the policeman's son explains to the stunned father that the messages exchanged between the victim and the perpetrator seem innocent but aren't. That there are codes. And we all go oooooooooooooh! It ends with a chorus of kids, and then a single voice, of a girl. They sing (badly) Fragile by Sting.

Episode three: The most unbearable, the worst executed, in my opinion. Or perhaps the most beautiful. Seven months have passed. The young fool is in a juvenile center. The episode is entirely about his session with a wacky psychologist. Who's nothing like Clarice Starling and her blunt scalpel. At most, this one has a popsicle stick. And she's sure she can't use it well either. What does she achieve? Nothing, she just makes the young fool freak out a couple of times. Who gets scared, who doesn't accomplish anything. (except maybe that kids freak out too? Has the psychologist never seen Carrie or read Lord of the Flies?) Here, in my opinion, the film misses a great opportunity. Meanwhile, I think of K-pax. When they ask him: but where is the planet you come from? And he (as would happen to us in his place) can't really answer...

Episode four: In my opinion, the most beautiful. The family. Eleven months later. Dealing with other young fools making fun of them. With the usual question of where did we go wrong. And also – if you want – the answer, but damn, with the other daughter we didn't screw up that badly. The young fool who on the phone says he will plead guilty. And the father who goes into his room, takes the teddy bear from the bed, puts it under the covers, kisses it. And I'm looking for the fifth episode.

That's all? Yes, that's all. Now, one usually, despite the fact that the series was watchable, wasn't unpleasant, asks: yes, but what did you want to tell me? No, you didn't want to present a true crime case. Anything that was or could be the crime part is just hinted at and then left there. Not even talk to me about cyberbullying. That's also really just hinted at. Almost everything is just hinted at. And reported. Like in a reality. Like in Big Brother (the only one worthy of a capital letter is the one who played with Janis). No twists. Nothing.
I mean, seriously: what did you want to say?
I don't know, I'm not sure. But I think again of K-pax. And also of that quote I put at the beginning. And I think the film could have been titled Close Encounters of the Third Kind. And that even all of us, all of you who are here reading, were extraterrestrials. Then - luckily - not by merit, we managed to survive, to find a way...