LFF 2013 - We Are The Best!

The punk age of music was all about rebellion, standing out from the crowd and simply breaking away from the norm. With this firmly in mind, Swedish director Lukas Moodysson brings us his latest offering, We Are The Best!, combining punk with a wonderful story of three young girls living life to the full and embracing their growing friendship as they create their own band.

Set in the 1980s, We Are The Best! follows Bobo (Mira Barkhammar) and Klara (Mira Grosin), who are the best of friends, and seen as outcasts at their school. The main reason for this is their love for punk music; a genre that many see as aged and useless. Sporting their own punk-style hair and clothes, Bobo and Klara are on the cusp of being teenagers, and are enjoying the freedom and revitalisation that the music brings to them, resulting in their aspirations to be a band.

Eventually joined by the religious Hedvig (Liv LeMoyne), who is also cast out at school as one of the 'loser' kids, the young girls begin to spark up an unbreakable bond and friendship as they escape down a path of punk music, boys and discovery. Determined to showcase their song in the works, 'Hate The Sport', the girls soon find out what it means to be a tight-knit trio and dare to defy all those around them who doubt them.

The perfect film to give you that warm feeling inside, Moodysson's latest offering is as lively and endearing as the focus music featured in his movie. Pumping with punk songs left, right and centre, We Are The Best! is elevated with its lively soundtrack and strengthened further by a lovely story and a three-pronged attack on the core emotions through its wonderful lead actresses.

It's a great feat to get three young stars, of such young ages (12 and 13, to be precise) to command the screen and carry a film, but that's just what Barkhammar, Grosin and LeMoyne do, reminding the audience of their own childhood and how fun it was to hang with friends and experience the wonders of youth. All representing different types of characters, loud, reserved and shy, the girls bring a certain memorable edge to the film and consequently maintain a connection with the audience throughout. It's exceptional to see and is no doubt hugely down to the inspired decision from the director to have the girls live together during production of the film.

In having Bobo and Klara as untalented musicians and embracing Hedvig as the 'talented one', we also get a nice dynamic in the growing relationship, allowing for many moments of humour between the girls, almost improvised in their nature. These are among the peaks of the film and once again leave us the viewer smiling from ear to ear.

That's exactly what We Are The Best! is all about; connecting with its audience and leaving them with a warm heart and a huge smile on their face, and Moodysson's film does exactly that. It's key characters are all ones you want to back from start to end, the issues of youth covered (first love, poor decisions etc) are all very familiar and the backdrop of the punk scene all combine to create a wonderful concoction of a film defying the generic coming-of-age cliché.

We Are The Best! is a lovely surprise of a film that stands on its own two feet, providing a beautiful chemistry between its lead trio and leaves you with a grin like a cheshire cat. It's bold, humourous and packs plenty of charisma, very much like its focus music genre. This may be the best thing to come out of Sweden since IKEA...