We Are The Best! (Vi Är Bäst!), L. Moodysson

Reviewed by Dennis Hansson. Viewed at Santa Barbara International Film Festival

Entertaining and heartwarming portrait of three young girls lives in 1980’s Stockholm, Sweden, facing stereotyping and their struggle in their teenage-lives, trying to start an all girl punk band. Bobo and Klara is best friends and has been for quite a while. They are both trying to be walk their own ways in life, not caring about what other people thinks of them. One day, in pure revenge against a group of boys who played rock in the same school as them, they borrow the school’s room for music practice, and decides to form their own punk band. In a school show, they found their missing piece, which was a guitar player. Hedvig. Hedvig is not like Bobo and Klara, but more calm and more afraid of change. Since Bobo and Klara didn’t know much about music in general, Hedvig becomes a very vital part of the trio.

Throughout the movie, we get to follow these three girls lives as they prepare for a show in Västerås, a small town outside of Stockholm, and all the issues and challenges they faces along the way. I would say that the main themes in this movie is love, loss and the struggle of finding your identity.

We Are The Best! was an experience, as it always is with Lukas Moodysson, this great swedish filmmaker who has made some very emotional dramas (Fucking Åmål, Lilja 4-ever, and Tillsammans), which I also expected We Are The Best! to be, but got surprised and very happy to see him pull off a very serious movie that includes a large amount of comedic content. If you like this movie after you have seen it and also enjoy watching very serious and thought-provoking dramas, you have to see his other films, which are simply stunning. I am not going to compare Mr. Moodyson with Mr. Ingemar Bergman, which you film-enthusiast probably are familiar with (a true legend, which you should be look up if you’ve got the time), but I kind of want to anyway. He is our modern Ingemar Bergman, who creates great films that always includes great cinematography, very well written scripts, and great direction.

Since I am from Sweden and understand the language, I think I got a different experience from it, since I from time to time was watching the subtitles, feeling sorry for everybody else in the theatre that couldn’t understand the spoken word, but had to rely on these subtitles.. I mean, the dialogue in the movie is pretty much spot on, on how kids in Sweden talk to each other, which means that the dialogue includes to many words to be able to transcribe in some scenes. This was not a vital part of the movie, but it made me laugh a bit more in “odd” places than the rest of the audience.

I would give We Are The Best!, 7 out of 10, and it is a very entertaining and funny film to watch with the whole family.