Sunday, 3 August 2014

The world is a morgue but you're watching Björn Borg.

We Are The Best!
Lukas Moodysson 2013 Sweden
Starring: Mira Barkhammar, Mira Grosin, Liv LeMoyne, Jonathan Salomonsson, David Dencik, Charlie Falk, Ann-Sofie Rase, Lily Moodysson


We Are The Best! starts off with a scene that may seem familiar. A child, Bobo, sits largely unnoticed during a birthday gathering, visibly alone in a crowded room. She's unusual, has cropped hair that it's stated she cut herself, whether her name actually is Bobo (a possibility considering her party crazy, gadabout mother) or if it's simply a nickname is never revealed. She's a character that could have come straight out of director Lukas Moodysson's debut Fucking Åmål. Within the first  couple of minutes she leaves and phones her best friend Klara and the pair have a verbal pissing contest over whose parents are the worst. It's a draw. Later Bobo consoles her sulking mother after she's been dumped by her boyfriend, tries to get her to eat, offers her aspirin, tells her to get some sleep, her ease in the role reversal suggesting that this isn't the first time she's had to play the adult. It's a trait that passes over into her other relationships with her as the more sensible, rational and kind of the two and Klara as the impulsive, confrontational one, a sign of her own bohemian upbringing. The girls are punks in a year, 1982, when punk is regularly declared as being dead. Derided by the pretty girls and rockers alike they're intelligent and forthright yet full of authentically teenage self-delusion. They talk back, almost glad not to fit in, and when they start a band it's mainly an ingenious plan to stop them having to listen to the local heavy metal group rehearse. Soon though they join up with fellow outcast Hedvig, a talented guitarist (Klara and Bobo are enthusiastic but totally untrained) and bearing the mark of a more stable and religious family life, and their never named group becomes more concrete. But Moodysson doesn't just make the girls one-dimensional aspirational figures and is as quick to point out their bad points, not least the irony of Klara scornfully labelling others as fascists while mocking Hedvig's unwavering belief in God, a hint of her aping of the movement's views while apparently unaware of both the implications of the word and its true meaning. Her cruelty is also a concern, in one of the film's most uncomfortable scenes she even forcefully persuades Hedvig to sheer her long blonde hair into a more androgynous do and is then intensely confronted by her friend's mother but appears simply to pay lip service rather than actually learning from the experience. The plot isn't just about youthful rebellion however or even the punk scene as a whole and actually allots more time to the trio's growth as adolescents, their crushes and friendships, their doubts and fractures. By the time the credits roll the advancement of their personalities has become as important as the movement of their musical dreams. All three young actors are superb, successfully carrying the lion's share of the dramatic responsibility, but in particular Liv LeMoyne stands out as Hedvig. At one point a character says that there are more ways of stating your opinion than simply speaking and that really encapsulates her performance - she's quiet and thoughtful, her voice only really breaking forth in the last twenty minutes, but a plethora of small reactions fizz below the surface. The film too marks a more mature, user-friendly Moodysson - indeed, when Bobo cuts herself it's entirely accidental, she breaks into sobs rather than barely reacting like Agnes in Åmål and a massive wrapped bandage is ever-present afterwards almost as if warning viewers against doing the same. His empathy is still there but the tone is more sweet than caustic although this may lay partially in the origins of the simple yet lyrical script (it's adapted from Moodysson's wife Coco's graphic novel Never Goodnight). Either way he has a clear and positive message this time, not just of individuality and free thought but also, as the title suggests, of the importance of self-belief. Tender, charming and far more likeable than anything he's made before.

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