Booksmart Olivia Wilde

Olivia Wilde’s directorial debut is a coming-out and coming-of-age story surprising for its irony and irreverence. How refreshing it is to find two girls as protagonists, talking freely about their sexuality at the very moment when they’re maturing individually and socially.
Molly and Amy are first in class, engaged in political debates or humanitarian missions. They feed their determination and show disdain for those who ignore them. They train themselves with aggressive autogenic meditation, reciprocal declarations of love, and messages passed via a secret code of fidelity. On the last day of school, they learn that their time-wasting peers will also gain access to the same university they’ve entered through so many sacrifices.
The film turns into a night-long journey to regain the experiences unobtainable from books. Both girls will realize that they too have helped feed the very same stereotypes they thought themselves the only victims of. Across a succession of situations and plot twists of smart parody and cinematic sensitivity, the characters show a greater complexity than what we are used to seeing in comedies about growing up. BOOKSMART equally offers an unusual, proactive perspective and never ceases to demonstrate an intelligence that moves way beyond sarcasm. (Eva Sangiorgi | Viennale)

Zwei beste Freundinnen und Streberinnen kommen ausgerechnet kurz vor ihrem Schulabschluss darauf, dass sie zu viel gelernt und zu wenig gefeiert haben. Und so versuchen sie, das bisher Versäumte in einer einzigen Nacht nachzuholen, an deren Ende eine Lektion steht, die man nicht aus Büchern lernen kann.