The We and the I

Overview

Are you ready to get back on the school bus? The We and the I is a 2012 American dramedy directed by Michel Gondry, the idiosyncratic French filmmaker responsible for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

In this fictional film, Gondry recruits a handful of talented kids from the Bronx, the infamous Fort Apache neighbourhood, and fashions a script around them. These Bronx high-schoolers play out real stories on a fictitious bus line, the BX66, and as the bus shudders through real South Bronx neighborhoods old friendships shatter, flirtations begin, secrets spill over and bullies jeer.

There's anger, there's profanity, and there's tenderness — all presented without teen-movie romanticism or moral judgment. The We and the I perfectly captures the freewheeling, hormonal chaos of being in high school, not to mention the joy of profanity, and the conflict between the desire to be oneself and the need to fit in. Go see it; there might be somebody in this jumbly group that you recognise.