Movie Review : ‘Frosh’ a Refreshing Look at a Classy Freshman Class

In an era when we’re constantly bombarded with messages of despair, Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine’s “Frosh: Nine Months in a Freshman Dorm” offers real hope. The bright, reflective young people who are living in Stanford’s Trancos dorm--it is the 1990-91 academic year--are caring, inquiring individuals who mature before our very eyes. This wonderfully refreshing film, full of humor and compassion, leaves us with the feeling that if there are sufficient numbers of such people, this country may just continue to survive, maybe thrive.

For most anyone who ever was a college freshman, the film has an irresistible nostalgic pull. Some things don’t change, after all: the tug of bidding parents goodby; the adjustment to a new and challenging environment; the forging of friendships, some of which may last a lifetime; the bull sessions; the high jinks amid hard study; the struggle to maintain emotional equilibrium.

Freshman year is the best of times, the worst of times, but you can’t help but feel how much better, how much richer an experience it is for these young people than it was for those of us who underwent it decades ago.

Trancos is not only co-ed--40 men, 40 women--but strongly multiethnic, with many African Americans and Asian Americans (but, oddly, few Latinos). How good it is for young people from all over the country and from widely differing backgrounds to get to know one another; how good it is, in this era of paranoia between the sexes, for men and women to get to know one another by living in the same building and sharing the same facilities.

Ironies abound. The highly intelligent and mature Brandi, an African American, admits she grew up in an upper-middle-class neighborhood so white that she didn’t have any black friends. It’s Brandi, however, who’s supportive of Monique, a black woman from Oakland, born out of wedlock to a woman who is now addicted to crack. Monique is every bit as smart and competent as Brandi but lacks Brandi’s confidence and feels so out of place she threatens to drop out.

Other students we get to know are Shayne, who finds her views increasingly in conflict with the rigid doctrines of her Catholic upbringing; Debbie, who is an outspoken feminist; Cheng, who discovers Stanford to be academically tougher than he expected; and Sam, who is as close to being average or ordinary as these young people get. Significantly, he’s the most thrilled to be accepted by a fraternity, admitting frankly to his need to be liked.

We find ourselves hating to bid farewell to these young people and cannot help but wonder what has become of them, especially Monique. We’ll eventually get our chance to find out, for the filmmakers are at work on a sequel, centering on the graduation of this class this year.

* MPAA rating: Unrated. Times guidelines: It contains blunt language, candid discussions about sex. ‘Frosh’

A Geller/Goldfine production. Producers-directors-cinematographers-editors Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine. Co-editor Deborah Hoffman. Running time: 1 hour, 33 minutes.

* In exclusive run at the Nuart Theatre, 11272 Santa Monica Blvd., West Los Angeles. (310) 478-6379.