We Are the Best! (2014)

Content by Tony Macklin. Originally published on October 24, 2014 @ tonymacklin.net.

We Are the Best! is as unique as chips and chocolate sauce. It's also as universal as cosmic pubescence.

Set in Stockholm and environs in 1982, We Are the Best! is the story of three girls who join together to create a punk band of sorts. The oldest - 8th-grader Hedvig (Liv LeMoyne) has talent. She can play classical music on the guitar. The other two - 7th-graders Bobo (Mira Barkhammar) and Klara (Mira Grosin) - are simply bangers.

All three are misfits.

They share a movie-length sulk of energy and exasperation. The best sulker is Bobo, who loudly insists punk is not dead. Amidst the blare and crash of sound at parties, she sits bespectacled with an impassive, blank expression. She doesn't belong.

When she's with her friend Klara, she comes alive. Klara is bright and impish - a natural troublemaker.

They enlist the sedate, quiet Hedvig, after Hedvig's performance at a school assembly, in which she faced derision.

Bobo and Klara are androgynous sprites. Bobo especially wants to change religious Hedvig. Bobo is rebelling against everything - sports, parents, peers, God, and long hair.

Bobo lives in a world where "hatred" is a cliche. She "hates" everything.

She also overreacts to almost everything. When she accidentally cuts herself with a knife, she cries, "I'm going to die."

Bobo is a punk bopper. So is Klara. Hedvig eventually - and perhaps ironically - becomes the voice of reason. Punk, faith, and reason together.

Swedish director Lukas Moodysson based his film on his wife Coco's graphic novel.

Although the improvisation at times falters a bit, the portrait in the film of young girls searching for identity has the pangs of undeniable truth.

Fortunately, Moodysson avoids the pitfalls of American movies that rely on fluids and gas for most of their portraits of the pubescent. They're not Swedish meatballs.

The parents are shown at times as foolish, but not as fools. The scene in which Bobo and Klara have to have a face-to-face meeting with Hedvig's mother (Ann-Sofie Rase) shows a mother using perception and psychology.

Throughout the film, the girls experience infatuations, conflicts, and isolation.

Moodysson is artful at portraying alienation. He has a memorable shot of Bobo walking alone on a snow-covered roof, and another of Bobo sitting by herself on a seat in the corner of a subway train.

It's an adult world, and the girls are outsiders. There's a piquantly human scene in which an adult misjudges the gifted Hedvig and gives her instructions on how to play the guitar.

Moodysson's greatest strength is portraying young people trying to be special in a world that welcomes conformity.

At some time, we all pretend to be "the best."

It's a fleeting but crucial time of life.

We Are the Best! captures it.