The Eighteen Year Itch

I don't have to runaway and live in the street. I can runaway and I can go to the ocean, I can go to the country, I can go to the mountains. I could go to Israel, Africa, Afghanistan.

That moment in your life when, actually, what you want to do is just get the hell out of home and do something, anything, in order to make your stamp on the world, or leave your mark on other people's lives, whether for better or for worse, just so long as people actually care. In the words of Tallulah in Bugsy Malone 'You may forget I've been here but you won't forget me'.

Actually that sounds vaguely threatening, so to tone it down, I'd like to mention how I have won my coveted place at university, and now I would like to just GO THERE ALREADY and not have to wait until October. Which is such a long time away. And yes, I am doing things in the mean time like, um, going to Italy on Sunday (such a hard life, right) but really all I'd like to do is start living. 

And so we come to The Breakfast Club, John Hughes' brilliant film about high school cliques, genders, preconceptions, and breaking all of the above. I think the beauty of it is that everyone can identify with multiple characters and, unlike Ferris Bueller's Day Off which is just about the freedom of life (deep statement alert), it actually asks questions of teenagers, about why we act how we do, whose perceptions of ourselves we are conforming to, wittingly or unwittingly, and whether we can actually break from the mould and live for ourselves, making our own decisions. 

I think the images and styling of this film are absolutely to-die-for, with 'good' vs 'weird' clearly marked out in the jock clothes and fingerless gloves, but one of the most poignant scenes in the film is when lovely Molly Ringwald gives Judd Nelson's character her earring. Just this idea that a small diamond earring can stand for so much and so many different things in different settings, wholesomeness with Molly and rebel attitude with Judd... It's brilliant.