Deja vu drama ‘Before I Fall’ drives home life lessons

their huge concrete-andglass home, she’s her own proto-woman, heading into an assuredly fabulous future with little more than a parting glance at the past.

Sam may not be the queen bee at school — that title is reserved for her best friend, Lindsay, played with side-eyed hauteur by Halston Sage — but she’s first among alphas. It’s Cupid Day, when students send each other notes attached to a rose, and she has more than her share, including from her not-sosecret admirer Kent (Logan Miller).

Taken up with such momentous issues as popularity, pecking orders and the impending loss of her virginity to a lunkhead in a baseball cap, Sam can’t be bothered with questions of mortality or life’s meaning. But the important things come into focus over the course of repeated sequences that Russo-Young stages with swiftness, verve and a bumpin’ soundtrack.

Aided by an attractive backdrop and production design, as well as a sympathetic performance from Deutch and Miller’s disarming portrayal of unrequited devotion, “Before I Fall” checks all the boxes as an entertaining, if perhaps painfully obvious, tutorial in why, as one minor but pivotal character says, “High school is just a blip.” (A recurring motif involving Sisyphus at least boasts a witty tagline, albeit one that loses its zip over repeated deliveries.)

While “Before I Fall” doesn’t dispense with authority figures entirely, this is a movie squarely directed at adolescents in all their untamed desire, outsize emotion and near-bottomless self-obsession. The filmmakers have crafted a canny delivery system for their life lessons, by way of a movie that balances escapism, candor and ethics with admirable aplomb.