Set in Stockhom 1982, We Are The Best! focuses on Klara, Bobo and Hedvig, three thirteen year-olds who decide to create a punk band. The film goes through the conventional stages of teen musical. Klara and Bobo don’t know how to play the guitar and befriend Hedvig in the first place so she can told them how to make rather agreeable sounds coming out of their instruments. As a band, the girls have to regularly face the divas of the school who are more interested in disco than punk, but also the other boys band that mocks the existence of the group.
These conventions, rather than being a constraint to the narration, set a solid frame on which the director, Lukas Moodysson, develops his characters. The strength of the film is without a doubt the matrix between the three girls. As an audience, we follow the evolution of their friendship but also their transition between childhood and teenagers years. Without being moralistic and heavily pointing out what supposedly should be the reality of every thirteen year old, Moodysson’s style manages to find the right balance in the depiction of Klara, Bobo and Hedvig’s backgrounds, whilst creating a true cinematographic synergy between the characters. They are not only learning how to play punk music, but also, if not mainly, how to play together, how to listen to each others, and how to be true friend to one another. In so doing, they find themselves reflecting on the essence of friendship, relationships but also faith. Music is at the core of their life, but also undeniably a real leitmotiv to their questioning.
We Are The Best! (2013), directed by Lukas Moodysson, is released in DVD in the UK by Metrodome, Certificate 15. Watch the trailer below:
