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We Are the Best!
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| Year: |
2013
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Director: |
Lukas Moodysson
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| Stars: |
Mira Barkhammar, Mira Grosin, Liv LeMoyne, Johan Liljemark, Marttias Wiberg, Jonathan Salomonsson, Alvin Strollo, Anna Rydgren, Peter Eriksson, Charlie Falk, Lena Carlsson, David Dencik, Emrik Ekholm, Ann-Sofie Rase, Lily Moodysson
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| Genre: |
Comedy, Drama |
| Rating: |
  8 (from 1 vote) |
| Review: |
It is the early eighties and punk rock has been left behind by the Swedish public for the pleasures of heavy metal and disco, but two thirteen-year-old girls are determined to carry a torch for the musical movement. They are best friends Bobo (Mira Barkhammar) and Klara (Mira Grosin), and they don't really have any other friends, especially since they cut their hair to look more punk, Bobo in short, spiky style and Klara in a carefully maintained mohawk, but one day when they are at the youth club busying themselves with a diorama depicting the effects of mass nuclear power station meltdown they are disturbed by the amateur metal band rehearsing in a nearby room. They are so incensed they make sure to book the room for their own band...
Only their band doesn't exist, but they are certainly going to remedy that in director Lukas Moodysson's adaptation of his wife Coco's comic book, and one which saw him returning to his more optimistic, positive works that he had made his name with earlier in his career. There were those who preferred his "life is shit" stylings, but many more were delighted to see We Are the Best! since it was not throwing up its hands at the depressing nature of life for the disadvantaged, and instead showing how someone - three teenage girls, in fact - can make something of their boring days without buckling under to convention. Bobo, Klara and later Hedvig (Liv Lemoyne) - who can really play - are true rebels against conservative conformity.
Which in its exuberant manner was far more palatable than watching a bunch of old blokes complaining about creeping fascism and totalitarianism in the state, because with these girls we can see they are being stifled by the tedium of their surroundings so it is far more reasonable for them to stage their own three-person revolution, if only because since they embrace punk at an age it makes perfect, unironic sense they can actually make a difference. That this was released at a time when the opposite was the overwhelming mood of the world, that society was either stagnating or wallowing in increasingly violent intolerance, made the Moodyssons' efforts all the more valued, telling us in a roundabout fashion that even a small act of non-conformity in the great scheme of such things can be a victory worth savouring.
To the central trio - they don't seem to ever think to give their band a name - these small acts of rebellion are absolutely huge, and this is much of the appeal as we can put them in perspective yet understand why keeping the spirit of punk alive is more than listening to poorly-produced records by angry white boys with guitars. That is precisely what our heroines do, they may not make any records (though who knows how their lives may have gone afterwards?) and they only have one song about hating sport, but their energy and attitude speaks volumes. When we see their parents, Bobo and Klara's are more like overgrown teenagers, bickering, playing, breaking up with each other, except they don't have youthful intensity on their side and have become shackled to the rules of their community, like Hedvig and her strict religious upbringing.
But don't go thinking this was some stony-faced diatribe insisting "grown ups are bad, kids are good", as there was plenty of humour here, much of it laugh out loud funny as the girls refuse to knuckle under. Their animated anarchy, such as it is, was akin to watching the Marx Brothers invade some stuffy high society do, and thanks to the excellent performances of the young actresses who genuinely come across as thoroughly enjoying themselves they may not be tearing down Sweden to its very foundations, but they are immensely sympathetic in their endeavours to find meaning and excitement: no moping around bemoaning their lot for these ladies. When in the later stages their relationships turn rather tension-fraught thanks to boy trouble, this is not the sort of film, like The Fabulous Stains was, to see them broken-hearted and disillusioned for long, although they don't always recognise it, they are too strong for that so the concert finale in front of a haranguing audience is both hilarious and inspirational. We Are the Best! was a real tonic.
Aka: Vi är bäst!
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| Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
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| Lukas Moodysson (1969 - )
Swedish writer-director who won international acclaim for his socially-conscious dramas: teenage romance Fucking Amal (aka Show Me Love), commune drama Together and the tragic Lilya 4-Ever. After the harrowing, controversial Hole In My Heart he turned even more experimental with the reviled Container, then the thematically ambitious Mammoth. However, he secured his best reaction in years with his 2013 feminist punk comedy We Are the Best! |
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