We are the best! (Vi är bäst!) (Lukas Moodysson , 2013): Sweden

Reviewed by Johanna Carlsson at Santa Barbara International Film Festival 2014

We are the best is a Swedish movie directed by Lukas Moodysson, who also is the director of the well-known Swedish movie called Fucking Åmål. This time, Lukas has written a touching drama about teenagers during the 80’s who loves punk. In a time where people are saying that the Punk is dead, Klara (played by Mira Grosin), Bobo (played by Mira Barkhammar) and Hedvig (played Liv LeMoyne) are trying to live their life as punk rockers and to show that the punk is not dead! This is a well written movie about friendship, what it is like to be a teenager and to be different from others.

The movie takes place in a suburb to the capital of Sweden, Stockholm. The year is 1982. In this suburb live two best friends, Klara and Bobo. The two girls are not like everyone else in their age, they stand out and have their own style. They are listening to punk, have short hair and wear clothes which the punkers wore during the 80´s. People around them, in school and the youth center, do not understand them and think they are strange and treat them badly. It is not only people in their own age that seems to cause problems for the girls. There are unstable families and both Klara and Bobo have problem with the boys, they do not think they ever are going to get a boy. But one thing they both love and live for is the punk. One day they decide that they want to start their own band. They do not know how to play the instruments but they are trying to learn the best they can.

Hedvig, a girl in school, is performing a song on a school concert. Klara and Bobo see an opportunity to ask Hedvig to join the band and teach them how to play. Hedvig is very different from Klara and Bobo. Hedvig is Christian and a real “good girl”. Hedvig agrees with their offer to join the band and starts to teach the girls how to play the instruments. They star to create a song and practice as much as they can. But is the band going to help them become more accepted and to show that the punk is not dead?

Something I liked about the movie was how they successfully made you feel as if you were in the 80’s. The clothes, the hair and the music felt very eighties. The lighting was quite dimmed during the whole movie and they used the lighting to make it feel as if it was back in the day. A thing that contributed to get in the right punk mode was the environment. I tend to think that the punk is dark and that they want to provoke. It was mostly very dark and bad wheatear, rain and snow. The suburb does not seem to exciting and I think it was good for the feeling of the movie. The pictures you can see in the movie reflex the girls feelings of being misunderstood.

I think this was a really good movie and definitely worth seeing. I think it can be entertaining for people in all ages, all from teenagers who can see themselves in the girls to adults who maybe recognize how it was during the eighties. As I wrote in the beginning, this is a touching drama about friendship and to be different. What made it good were that the actors reached out and made the audience feel involved in their feelings. It was a great story and well played.