We Are the Best!

It's 1982, and two Stockholm-reared 13-year-old girls, shy bespectacled Bobo (Mira Barkhammar) and more confident Klara (Mira Grosin), refuse to accept that punk is dead. Natural anarchists as only pubescent girls can be, they decide to stir things up by forming a band, blithely undeterred by their inability to play even the three chords that are the proverbial minimum for punk rock. What they do have is passion and attitude to spare. And after recruiting a third member, Hedvig (Liv LeMoyne), a willowy 15-year-old Christian who can actually play guitar, it soon looks like they have the makings of Sweden's first Riot Grrrl outfit. Director Lukas Moodysson cut his teeth on beautifully tuned, semi-improvised studies of misfit young people with Show Me Love and Together before embarking on a string of more tragic and/or challenging films (Lilya 4-Ever, Container). So it's an utter delight have him back in more cheerful, accessible form here. The film has its darker moments - like the spot-on exploration of how resentment and jealousy can fester within the fondest friendship - but you'd have to have a heart of Arctic ice to finish the film not smiling with joy.