SEPTEMBER 13 — If you really think about it, the music we encountered and loved during our teenage years will always be thought of as the best.
For someone who came of age in the 90s, it’s uncanny how the CDs that are available for sale at the Amcorp Mall flea market are mostly made up of 90s classics... knowing that it’s mostly my generation that frequents that beloved joint.
It’s probably just sentimental, but sometimes these favourites from our teenage or young adult years do turn out to have that extra quality that makes them pass the test of time.
Blind Melon and The Presidents Of The United States Of America may have turned out to be not much more than one hit wonders, but 90s staples like The Lemonheads, Gin Blossoms and even second-tier bands like Buffalo Tom have stood the test of time.
As a young cinephile, some of the films that I loved during my teenage/young adult years like Breaking The Waves and Rushmore have turned out to be modern classics, while some seem to have been forgotten, especially the early films from the 90s American indie wave like Living In Oblivion and In The Soup.
I first encountered the name of Swedish director Lukas Moodysson during these crucial teenage/young adult years, when his debut film Show Me Love won distribution and a lot of praise in most of the major territories.
His tale of two teenage girls falling in love with each other in a small town in Sweden was nothing new in terms of content because the 90s was very much the first full flowering of what’s sometimes called New Queer Cinema, and tales of two attractive teenage girls falling in love were a dime a dozen then.
What makes it special was how the film didn’t make a big deal out of the girls’ sexuality. It could have been a heterosexual love story and it would still have been something really special.
What made so many people fall in love with the movie was its complete understanding of what it means to bored teenagers trying to discover who they are in a small town where nothing much happens.
Moodysson further demonstrated his facility with working with young actors in his next two films, Together and Lilya 4-Ever, with Lilya particularly stunning audiences the world over with its devastating tale of a young Russian girl tricked into prostitution. He then kind of lost his way with his next few films as he embarked on a series of experimental narratives that made many fans (including yours truly) lose interest.
So what a pleasant surprise it is to find Moodysson return to form with his 7th film, the very appropriately titled We Are The Best! Come to think of it, this one might actually be his best film to date.
It may point to his debut Show Me Love in that it is a coming of age tale involving teenage girls in small town Sweden, but if Show Me Love more or less revolved around the girls’ choice of sexuality, this new one takes the road much less travelled in that the girls are in no way sexualized and the story is strictly about coming of age through friendship.
It tells the tale of teenage misfits Bobo and Klara, who are still into punk while their classmates have moved on to disco and New Wave somewhere in Stockholm in 1982. Even Klara’s older brother has “left” punk and moved on to Joy Division and its post-punk ilk.
With not many friends, Bobo and Klara spend most of their time at their local youth center where they butt heads with a bullying and taunting bunch of metal boys who call themselves Iron Fist.
To get their revenge on the boys of Iron Fist, they decide to form their own band, never mind the fact that both of them have no clue how to play an instrument. It’s only later that another girl, Hedvig, a classical guitar player who’s very much a Christian is persuaded by them to join their band.
Despite the presence of some sort of bare bones of a story in the movie’s plot, which will of course involve a performance by the band as the movie’s climax, I find it remarkable how “punk” the movie really is in spirit.
Whatever movie you may think of as being a “grrl power” movie before this, I think I can safely say that this one trumps them all when it comes to exploring what it means for a girl to grow up. The movie’s even wise enough to not disregard the effect of boys in girls’ lives, though it is smart enough to know exactly how important (or unimportant) that is as a factor in a girl’s life.
But most of all, this is simply a hugely infectious little movie, with a joie de vivre that’ll wake up the 13-year-old inside anyone who’s watching. And the fact that it manages to capture exactly what made punk so attractive to a 13-year-old only made it even more special. My favourite film so far this year? You betcha!!
This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
