Notte prima degli esami - Oggi (2007)

Rome, June 2006. Luca Molinari is a nineteen-year-old in his final year of high school, convinced that he has very little chance of passing his final exams. He has a close-knit group of friends with whom he must face the dreaded exams: Riccardo, Alice, Massimiliano, known as “Massi,” and Massi’s girlfriend, Simona. One day in Trastevere, Luca happens to find himself in the middle of a pillow fight organized through a flash mob. There he meets Azzurra De Angelis, an eccentric dolphin trainer and aspiring marine biologist, and falls in love with her. He starts seeing her and even takes her to a jazz concert—a genre of music he hates—for which he manages to get tickets from Riccardo at a steep price. A few days later, one evening, Luca decides to go with his friends to his family’s seaside house for a night of studying. When they arrive, however, they discover Luca’s father, Paolo, leaving the house with his mistress, Professor Elisabetta Paliani, the students’ math teacher. Paolo often goes out in the evenings, telling his wife Antonella that he is going to play five-a-side football. Luca is visibly embarrassed to have his father’s irresponsibility exposed in front of his friends and makes him promise to end the affair immediately. Paolo ultimately does not do so, partly because Paliani tells him she suspects she is pregnant. The young people’s stories unfold alongside the Italian national football team’s matches at that year’s World Cup, where the Azzurri, considered complete underdogs at the outset, make it to the final. Luca grows ever closer to Azzurra, and eventually they kiss and become a couple. At one point, however, she unexpectedly tells him she wants to break up. He goes to her house to ask why, and Azzurra tells him she has found a new job and an opportunity to study in Paris, so she has to leave the next day. She is also sure she cannot maintain a long-distance relationship. Convinced that she has actually found someone else, Luca then discovers a French boy named Pierre in the house. Azzurra introduces him as a friend, but Luca insults her, attacks Pierre, and leaves in a fury. After Antonella nearly catches him having dinner with his mistress, Paolo decides to end the affair after learning that the suspected pregnancy was a false alarm. To do so, he tells Elisabetta that his wife has cancer and that he wants to be by her side during the few months she has left to live. Elisabetta agrees, but later happens to meet Paolo’s wife at the hospital and learns that the woman is only being treated for a simple rash. Furious at the lie, she ends things with Paolo for good after kneeing him in the groin. Soon afterward, Paolo is also left by his wife, who throws him out after learning about his affair through Riccardo’s blog. Unbeknownst to his friends, Riccardo writes there about all the things he learns about other people. Meanwhile, Massi has broken up with Simona, telling her that he wants a break and to have new experiences. In reality, he wants to be free to pursue Giulia, a girl he met at the swimming pool a few days earlier. But it turns out to be a prank set up by Luca and Riccardo, and Giulia is actually Riccardo’s cousin. Regretting what he did, Massi asks Simona to get back together with him, but she rejects him and leaves him. That evening, all the friends except Massi gather at a party at Alice’s house. Simona gets drunk there and, when Riccardo walks her home, she suddenly kisses him. Massi, who is outside the girl’s house, sees this, misunderstands what is happening, and physically attacks Riccardo. The two end up in hospital. After the party, Alice is alone with Luca and takes him to bed, since she is secretly in love with him. In the morning, however, she leaves angrily when she realizes that he is still interested in Azzurra. The night before the exams arrives, and because recent events have split up his group of friends and driven him away from Azzurra, Luca spends it in a bar talking with his father. He reproaches Paolo for not having been there when he needed him. At the bar, Luca recognizes the French boy he met at Azzurra’s house and discovers that he is actually gay. Luca rushes to Termini station and boards the overnight train to Paris, managing to find Azzurra in her compartment. After apologizing for his reaction, the two finally make love. Meanwhile, Paolo manages to meet his wife again with the help of his father-in-law, Luigi, who runs a small restaurant where Luca had taken Azzurra to dinner, and apologizes to her. When Luca wakes up on the train beside Azzurra, he realizes he has reached Milan: it is two in the morning, and he must be in Rome by eight for the first written exam. On top of that, a rail strike is scheduled for that same day. In a series of unlikely mishaps, he first gets to Arezzo by hitching a ride with a truck driver, then reaches Rome thanks to his father, who comes to pick him up on a motorcycle. He arrives at school fifteen minutes late. Professor Paliani and the other examiners are all willing to overlook it, but the chairman of the examination board, a teacher who has already suffered a string of misfortunes because of Luca, refuses to let him sit the exam. At that point, first his friends, who reconcile with him and welcome him warmly, and then all the other candidates refuse to continue the exam unless Luca is allowed to take it with them, and they leave the examination room. The chairman is therefore forced to change his mind, and Luca takes the exams, coming out “with a depressing 60,” but immediately finding consolation in the Italian national team’s World Cup victory. Before the credits, we are told that Paolo has been forgiven by his wife, but has nevertheless gone back to cheating on her, and that Azzurra left Luca about six months later, an event Riccardo recounted in detail on his blog. Luca, however, has fallen in love again.