The best… and the rest

The other day I happened to be at an advance screening of We Are the Best!, the latest film by Swedish director Lukas Moodysson. Set in Stockholm in the early 80s, the film follows the story of Bobo, Klara and Hedvig, three teenage girls -and social outcasts- who come together to form a rather peculiar punk trio.

It was my first acquaintance with Moodysson’s oevre and, apart from introducing me to Sweden’s lively punk scene of the late 70s/early 80s, it also made me curious to check some of his earlier works.

So I went on watching Show Me Love (1998),  Moodysson’s first full length film. It bears many resemblances to Blue Is the Warmest Color (‘La vie d’Adèle’, 2013), and it also sparked quite a controversy when it first came out.

But my favorite Moodysson’s title so far is Together (2000), a film about the members of a commune in 70s Stockholm. It takes great artistry to produce such a fine balance of sociopolitical commentary, satire and drama, especially so when you choose an ABBA song for the soundtrack without compromising on the aesthetic result.

Best friends

An underlying theme of all the aforementioned films is that of friendship. In Show Me Love it’s the relationship between two teenage girls who are still discovering their sexuality, in Together it’s the friendly (and quasi-romantic) bond between a young girl and a boy who both share big thick glasses, while in We Are the Best! it’s the unlikely friendship between two punks and a born-again Christian.

Moodysson’s works are marked by an utterly unpretentious style and a deep, heartfelt humanism. It’s stories about real people with real emotions, and situations all of us can easily identify with because we have been there too.

And that’s perhaps why even the cheesiest, shallowest or otherwise most indifferent songs take on a completely new dimension when heard, sung or danced to during one of these films.