Ciao Professore, Ciao Professore

Ciao Professore is a film with plot structures that I’ve seen time and time again. The inspirational teacher story is not difficult to find in America, with films such as Freedom Writers, Lean on Me, Stand and Deliver, The Ron Clark Story, and many others coming to mind the typical inspirational teacher story seems to follow this simple formula:

1)     The teacher is an idealistic man/woman with either an experience with good children or just recently got their license and are ready to nourish young minds.

2)     The teacher somehow gets placed in a school or classroom with a bad reputation.

3)     The students take an almost immediate disliking to the teacher and in many cases try to egg him/her on so that they’ll leave.

4)     The teacher very much considers leaving but then takes an alternate route of educating their students.

5)     The students slowly get into the teacher’s new methods and slowly become converts.

6)     There’s one student who is still unimpressed with the teacher until a situation where the teacher personally steps into their lives in some way, shape, or form and they share an experience that makes the student a convert too.

&

7)     They finally become a class.

Ciao Professore follows that formula almost to the point of ad nauseum. But what makes the film different is that while mostly these inspirational teacher stories take places in high schools and on the rare occasion middle schools, the students in the movie are 3^rd graders. 3^rd graders! When I was in 3^rd grade I couldn’t even tie my own shoes yet alone hold down a job like these kids do. I definitely didn’t know what half the things the students talk to their teacher about (I mean, what student, no matter what age, has the audacity to call their teacher a “faggot”) and in some strange way that really brings out the nature of the kids charm. Through the mouths of babes we’re able to see the choices that kids have to make in order to provide an income and to grow up and it just seems…refreshing.

What do you think, were these kids a breath of fresh air or were they just sickening? Somewhere in between?