Cum Laude (TV)

Rating: 7/10 (3 July 2007)

This movie is really deep & rich, thus it deserves my big appreciation
My first movie on French TV for a long time;
So far the oldest movie I review (1967-forty years ago-I'm not even that old !!);
A very young Dustin Hoffman when the last time I saw him was "Hook" & "Meet the parents": it is like the perfect youth cure and this movie offers a best trip back into time also;
At last, I remember having seen one time only the final five minutes, so I was stuck with a beautiful song "Sound of silence", and two lovers leaving on a yellow bus!
With this new airing, I build the movie like a prequel and it was a good time:
First, it is a good comedy: the graduate is sometimes in some silly situations you can wonder how he could have been an Harvard student.
Then, the director is brilliant: his angles are unusual but really artistic & symbolic: at this time, it was like pioneering!
Casting is perfect: Dustin Hoffman knows how to play a lonely, introvert but passionate lost young man. I am graduate on the subject: it is my life! His partners are excellent and they are faces of childhood memory: Mr Robinson is an actor I remember being in a delicate situation about a thing he doesn't want to be public! (thanks IMDb: it was "Jaws": my memory is terribly accurate !)
Finally, the story is a good testimony of its time and I understand now why it is associated with Flower Power generation; You don't see hippies there because it is high society but the spirit of this time reach this zone: call for freedom! Freedom from family (Mrs Robinson is more a victim than anything else), Freedom for sex, Freedom for wedding, Freedom for career,.. So maybe there was maybe too much Order before but only freedom isn't a solution either: the last frame says it all: they are happy but they go nowhere! Maybe that's why they stop laughing nearly at once !
If a sequel would be interesting (what have they become 40 years after, what did they done of their dreams, do they have new ones ???), right now, just enjoy this movie !