My Foray into Foreign Films - Part One: Flying Lesson

 To open up, I thought I’d start with something obscure, something unusual, something different. I, like so many, am facing a new era in my life. I’ve severed what were essentially the last few threads of my childhood and have been thrust full force into the world. Great. I’m sure I’m not alone, sitting in my stage of transition, and I hope that at least some of you can sympathize with how scared shitless I am. This is definitely a moment of ridiculous fantastic.

And that is what brings me to the topic of this post: Flying Lessons directed by Francesca Archibugi (quite a name, right?). It’s an Italian coming-of-age story about two boys, who go by Chicken and Curry (I shit you not), who have just failed their final exams in high school. Feeling lost and confused, they decide to go India. Curry, an adopted Indian boy, desperately wants to find his family.

The boys fumble their way through India, managing to lose their passports and get separate. The locals treat Chicken like they would treat other “white” foreigners, but, assuming that Curry is “one of them,” they speak to him in their language and treat him like a native. The boys are rescued from their struggles by a doctor from Habitat for Humanity named Chiara. She’s intelligent, giving, and courageous, and soon has Chicken falling head over heels.

Flying Lessons is an uncompromising tale of what we can face and what we can learn when we leave everything we know for an adventure. There are some horrors—losing their passports, nearly being arrested, attempted infanticide—but there are also joys. Curry finds his family’s home. His mother is dead, but he meets his sister and brings her back to Italy.

This is a hard to watch, hard not to be moved by piece of foreign cinema that makes me want to take an adventure. Maybe we should let go a bit. Take off to find our roots, or even our true love, and live through a crazy piece of reality that we will tell stories of for the rest of our lives.

Flying Lessons: 7 out of 10