Cinema Egzotik: Teenage Night
Who can remember what it was like to be a teenager? When nobody understood you and life was ruled by the prospect of Prom Night? It’s not all tears and fears, though: Egzotik presents two feel-good teen classics, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Pretty in Pink, with music by Violent Femmes, OMD and The Smiths.
Cinema Egzotik programmer Martin Koolhoven explains. “His teenage films were a byword in the 1980s. Hughes directed and/or wrote The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Ferris Bueller”s Day Off and the “trilogy” (because really the same storyline three times over) Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink and Some Kind of Wonderful. Six films in three years” time that captured the Zeitgeist and lay bare the adolescent soul.
Not long after, Hughes shifted his focus from adolescents to children (Home Alone, Dennis the Menace, Curly Sue, Flubber and Beethoven), abandoned Hollywood to go to Chicago, refused to do interviews any longer and started writing under the pseudonym Edmond Dantès, after the protagonist in Alexander Dumas” The Count of Monte Cristo. (Dantès escapes after having been innocently incarcerated for fourteen years, finds a fortune and takes his revenge on the people who plotted against him).
Nobody knew why Hughes disappeared, creating a Salingeresque myth. In this edition of Egzotik we”re going to try and find out whether there are any clues in two of Hughes” masterpieces dating from the most interesting period in his life as a filmmaker.”
Pretty in Pink Howard Deutch (US, 1986) 95'
The subject of this 1980s classic is the absolute highlight in the life of any American teenager: Prom Night. Andie Walsh, poor as a church mouse, makes her appearance on the night of nights accompanied by wealthy Blane McDonnagh. The soundtrack features bands like New Order, The Smiths and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark.
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Ferris Bueller”s Day OffJohn Hughes (US, 1986) 102'
What do you do when you don”t feel like going to school? You grab the Ferrari owned by one of your friends” dads and head for Chicago to whoop it up. Matthew Broderick offers a convincing performance as the glib but likeable Ferris Bueller. Hughes turned the film into an American feelgood movie with a genuine eighties soundtrack (Violent Femmes, Big Audio Dynamite).
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