I've been watching media forever. But I've never seen anything quite like this. It holds nothing back in its' determination to expose the worst aspects of human nature.....and some of the best. All in decadent splendor. In doing so, it hits hard on class conflict, without providing much balance to the morality of wealth. Most of the heroes here are poor, although far from perfect and the villains wealthy. Meanwhile teachers, administrators and cops take all the heat, while the kids claim the glory. But that doesn't ruin what was otherwise an unflinching, magnified look at the nature of desire, dependence, jealousy, friendship, loyalty, lust, and evil. With no mention of God, we are left to determine for ourselves, what constitutes right and wrong, good and bad, as well as the value of proportional punishment for crimes of passion. If you do something horrible in a fit of rage, should you suffer the same fate as your victim? Emotion would tell you yes, but logic may not. During those few moments of rage, you are technically insane. Afterward, you are back to being a normal person who wouldn't dream of doing what you just did. So should you spend your life in prison, or burn in hell? When it's your life on the line, no matter how guilty you feel, you may find a way to rationalize your desire to keep on living as you have been. But will others let you forget? Will your conscience? People might say that the sex, drugs, and violence displayed here are over-the-top. They may be in terms of their volume at one school. But I do believe that super rich, super smart, unsupervised kids grow up fast, and that many people have bi-sexual tendencies. These people fluctuate between treating each other horribly and coming to one another's aid. One character's speech explains it to a degree. They are imperfect beings, with loads of money and freedom to burn, living in a pressure cooker together for four years. Chaos ensues. But in the final analysis, many or most, loved each other. In a complex way that perhaps only they could truly understand. Life is messy. Lifelong friendship is a unique experience that most of us probably never taste. But it is depicted here with keen detail. Friends are addicted to one another and bleed when the other bleeds. They can't get enough, and they ultimately accept deviance and worse in the ones they love. Presenting fictional teens having sex, including loads of same sex encounters, may reflect "Euro" values about such matters. It may make you squirm, even if the actors may be technically past age 18. If you're conservative, fast forward past these scenes. Music plays a major role. It is mostly electronic dance music presented at a club where the kids guzzle booze. (I didn't catch the explanation for how this is possible). But also lyrical music through people's headphones. The Middle Eastern family are nice people. They were presented with dignity. The kids had no desire to hurt their parents. But they were growing up in Spain, not the Middle East, and feel tempted to live as others there do. Plenty of people from traditional cultures maintain their lifestyle. It just wasn't in the cards for this family. The acting is way above average. I never thought of them as actors. That's how much I believed them. Their roles require lots of emotion and they delivered beautifully. Also, their characters are complex and conflicted. That's not easy to portray. Great job. But the reason I'm still thinking about this thing in the middle of the night, is because it makes you face the absurdity of existence, and that runs counter to my official philosophy. Stuff happens. We make mistakes, we give in, we take back, we make up, and sometimes we die early, and there isn't always any rhyme or reason to it. Redemption comes and goes. But we just want to live, and one mistake can doom it all. That's how fragile is our existence.

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