We Are the Best!

Stockholm, 1982. Bobo and Klara are thirteen, short-haired, and considered odd by everyone at school. People keep saying punk is dead. Annoyed by this, they form a band, though neither of them can play. Then they find Hedvig, who plays guitar at church. The subject is not music but simply being thirteen. The band never gets good; what the film cares about is how a friendship gets built, the first jealousy, the first haircut, falling for the same boy on the same day. The form is small and close: handheld camera, natural light, an unprofessional energy. Lukas Moodysson comes out of the bleak middle stretch of his career and returns to warmth here. The source is Aldrig godnatt, a graphic novel by the director's wife Coco Moodysson, written semi-autobiographically out of her own adolescence. So the band on screen descends from a band that actually existed. The film's one song, an anti-sport anthem, sums up its entire politics in two minutes. Mira Barkhammar, Mira Grosin and Liv LeMoyne lead. It screened at the Venice film festival in 2013. Who it is for: anyone who likes coming-of-age films, punk, and friendships between girls. Who it is not for: viewers waiting for a dramatic rise; the band never succeeds and the film does not treat that as a failure.