LIFF27: Ghost Graduation Review

Reviewed as part of the 27th Leeds International Film Festival (6-21 Nov, 2013)

rating: 3.5

Dir: Javier Ruiz Caldera, 2012 A brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal...sound familiar? Unlike its central band of spectres, the influences on this supernatural Spanish comedy are plain to see. Opening and closing with a prom scene, Ghost Graduation ('Promoción fantasma') revisits the American high-school movies of the Eighties, emerging like a cross between Ghostbusters and The Breakfast Club- with more than just a dance montage as a nod to the latter. Our humble, hangdog hero is Modesto (Raúl Arévalo), a high school teacher plagued with the ability to see the dead. Rather than realise his gift, he instead begins to worry that he's losing his mind. Regular visits to a psychiatrist only seem to make matters worse- not least because Modesto is distracted by his shrink's dead father dispensing advice from an adjacent room. And so, having been forced out of one job after another, Modesto eventually settles in Monforte High, a school that has suffered a bad press of late; given that the previous principal was last seen being thrown out of a top-floor window. As stories of spooky goings-on creep along the corridors, it isn't long before Modesto discovers that the school is haunted by a group of ex-students, class of 1986, who had died in a fire while serving detention. And, with Monforte serving as a limbo, of sorts, Jorge (Jaime Olías), Dani (Alex Maruny), Mariví (Andrea Duro), ngela (Anna Castillo) and Pinfloy aka Pink Floyd (Javier Bódalo) cannot leave until they graduate. Each has unfinished business that is keeping them in this world- and so it falls to Modesto to help them pass their exams and pass through to the other side... It may sound like the sort of film you've seen a hundred times before, with its Hughesian 'losers' learning life lessons and clashing with authority figures, but Ghost Graduation deftly treads the line between parody and homage thanks to a sharp, cynical but surprisingly sweet script. At first, most of the humour comes from the inevitable culture clash as Modesto explains to his students just what they've missed in the last thirty years. This is mostly an excuse for making ironic jokes about George Michael (''I bet he married Miss Universe or something'' gasps Pinfloy) and turning Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" into something of a running joke. And although the characters begin as a stock list of social misfits, each defined by their own quest for closure, the film takes its time to flesh out, as it were, their relief/reluctance to move on - packing a lot of pathos into a tight 88 minutes.

Of course, it is only Modesto who can see the ghosts- and so we are occasionally given a glimpse of how the other teachers, the outsiders looking in, catch Modesto apparently talking to himself (or worse: an early scene involving the kids slamming the teacher into a tree looks somewhat different when you can't see the pranksters). Eventually, his increasingly erratic behaviour leads to calls from Otegui (Carlos Areces), the district school commissioner, to have both him and the new head Tina (Alexandra Jiménez) fired. Otegui is invariably portrayed as a pantomime villain - although there aren't many performances of Cinderella that end with a middle-aged man dropping his trousers in front of a packed school hall. Or rather, there shouldn't be. Sadly, it is this sort of spectacle that drags the film deep into the dregs of lowbrow humour and cheap provocation. For every carefully crafted sight gag, there's a crude and clumsy 'punchline' that just makes you wish the script would try a little harder. Caldera's previous film, his debut, was Spanish Movie (as its name suggests, every bit as infuriating a 'spoof' as Epic Movie, Date Movie and Disaster Movie) and we are suddenly reminded of the fact during these scenes. It's as though, in wishing to emulate the gross-out / sex comedy genre, the film simply strings along a series of shock tactics and hopes for the best. But it needn't have worried: we've already seen just how smart and self-referential it can be without having to debase itself- and its audience- with such needlessly broad gags. Not too knowing as to wink after every joke, nor too maudlin as to wallow in the students' woes, the film strikes the right balance as a genuinely funny black comedy (a supernatural love story subplot threatens to turn down some very dark corners, indeed) that stands above mere parody. Given its relatively fresh take on a familiar format, it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise to learn that Ghost Graduation has already been marked for a US remake by Will Smith's production company, Overbrook Entertainment. Before you see just how Hollywood intends to sell an American version of a Spanish twist on beloved 80's comedies, be sure to first check out the original... if 'original' is the right word.