Fucking Åmål - Il coraggio di amare

I'm usually impervious to teen movies. I just can't get beyond the usual moaning, complaining and whining. I find it too much to bear, especially from people who don't have to work for a living, who still have their parents looking after them and who are incapable of expressing themselves properly. I, for one, a pauper scumbag languishing in the job market, would love to have their inconsequential problems. But if I take myself back to my school days then I can just about find humanity enough to sympathise. My teenage years weren't tough – I actually really rather enjoyed school – but I know how it feels to grow up not knowing what you want from life and where you're going. It's certainly a confusing time.

So it's perhaps because of that that I enjoy Show Me Love. It's depiction of teenage years feels genuine and honest and I can relate to most of it. As opposed to Hollywood teen films where all the girls are strikingly gorgeous, the boys are ripped and everyone goes around driving cars and doing designer drugs. My school days weren't like that at all. They were much more like Moodysson's film where the girls wear bad make-up, the boys are hopeless with the opposite sex and where a crushing air of mediocrity hangs in the atmosphere. Everything seems hopeless.

But despite that, my adolescence was pretty smooth sailing. There were no great trails or tribulations. Which is perhaps why I find it so hard to relate to teenagers. Not once did I want to kill myself and I never spent any time pining for a girl (lusting, yeah, but love never entered my mind). So to me their problems always seem rather…pathetic. But because Show Me Love depicts adolescence so genuinely, with all its awkwardness and idiocy, I can't help but like it.

What rings most true is the sheer incompetence of boys around girls. At that age, most of the males of the species are hopeless with the opposite sex. They haven't a clue. And so the terrible compliments ('Jesus you're beautiful') and bone-headed chat-up attempts are rather amusing. Johan, in particular, with his awful bike and terrible baseball cap is subject of the most laughs. He's Amal in physical form. A dead end. And Markus, the other boy, is no better. He knows nothing about women either. In fact, the boys are more comfortable with each other. They'd rather spend time measuring mobile phones. Only with mobile phones, small is best. Inverse penis measuring, anyone?

And the sheer awfulness of a lot of the girls also rings a bell. I don't know her name, but the girl with the miniscule eyebrows (which makes her look rather sinister and perpetually shocked) reminds me of a lot of horrible girls at school. Girls who were experts in making other people's lives a misery. And then there's the handicapped girl. Agnes is unfortunate enough to be friends with her, even though she doesn't like her. Those friendships are the worst – friendships born entirely of convenience and without a shred of genuine affection. Nothing is more suffocating. But as in real life, such friendships are hard to get out of. You may not particularly like the person, you may have nothing in common and you may have nothing to say to one another, but at school to be alone is to be exposed. It's better to have someone in your corner – anyone. And it's especially hard to get out of the friendship if someone has a disability. You feel obliged to make them certain concessions. So therefore it's quite shocking, yet understandable, that Agnes lashes out at the girl and that the girl takes it the way she does. However, the disabled girl's attempts to get back at Agnes and curry favour with the rest of her classmates make me squirm. I saw many such incidents myself at school.

Less convincing, however, and it's a major reservation, is the sincerity of Elin's feelings towards Agnes. I just can't help but feel that it's a passing thing. Sure she may be a lesbian or bisexual, but I can't quite decide whether she does actually love Agnes – I completely believe in Agnes' feelings. She just seems to flit too often from one person or to one thing. There's one bit where's she checking to see what's cool and what's not cool. Is this her way of getting back? Is this her way of giving her life excitement? I'm not sure. When I first saw it I was more dubious, but now that I've watched it a couple more times I'm more willing to give the film the benefit of the doubt. I mean, Elin does reach the film's conclusion and her own conclusion rather haphazardly, but in that moment she does seem completely honest. And the ending, when they literally come out of the closet, is a great moment (although perhaps a little glib. I can't bear to think what they'd have to put up with afterwards and whether their fledgling relationship would survive).

But still, even if I'm not 100% sure of Elin's feelings, it still manages to be a rather beguiling film. And this is mostly down to Rebecca Liljeberg's performance as Agnes. As I've already said, most teens I don't really care about, but Agnes is an exception. She's a smart girl with good parents but who still feels miserable. But despite this, her character is never annoying and never seems selfish. She just wants what everyone wants. She wants to be happy and she wants to feel normal. And because she goes through such an understandable range of emotions during the course of the film, and because her angst seems so genuine and deeply felt, I can't help but love the end of the film.

I watched this with my girlfriend, who said it was one of the best love stories she had ever seen - I tend to agree. I am not usually a fan of love stories, preferring a good zombie flick, but this one transcended the genre by showing emotion and motivation of the characters in such an interesting way that you couldn't help but sympathize with them.

I confess that my motivations for watching it were rather base; I heard that it was about teenage Swedish lesbians, and thought that was a subject I would certainly like to explore in more depth. On the one hand, there are none of the explicit scenes I was hoping for; on the other hand, I got into the movie so much I didn't miss them.

Fans of love stories, teenage angst, girl power and anything related will definitely like this movie. Other people will like it too, you'll just have to talk them into watching it. It would certainly make a good date movie, or just one to provoke discussion and romance.

That scene in the car. That scene brought back every hope and dream I could remember as a 15 year old in love with a girl in my class I would never have. It was a validation of all those wonderful daydreams you had at that age and the hope that sprung from them. It was a moment that would send that pang in your heart to heights it's never known.

You're never in love like you are at that age - and when you watch a film like this where you can become so completely involved in the life and emotions of a girl like Agnes - and see her greatest hope realized after a day of humiliation and pain - your heart soars. In fact, I can't think of a moment in a movie that is as perfect as this one.

There's a universal quality to the feelings this film evokes that will pull in everyone who has a heart. I'm many years beyond high school - and of the opposite sex of the two protagonists in the film - and I still can't help but identify completely with this movie. Much of this has to do with the two actresses in the lead roles. Where did this director find these two phenomenal actresses? Rebecca Liljeberg has such a quiet and powerful range. Watching her react to other characters is one of the great pleasures of this film. Alexandra Dahlström takes a role that, in anyone else's hands would be either shallow or unbearable, and makes a character so complete, beautifully vulnerable and full of life you can understand why everyone loves her. These two girls - they are so wonderful, expressive and real you just want to hug them.

I saw this film when it came to New York, loved it then when i saw it once during what seemed like only a two week run, then recently remembered it and rented it. I have seen it 5 times since and I'm sure I'll see it many times more. It is a film that transcends gender, sexual orientation and age.

And for all you English language folks out there (I'm one of you), the subtitles will not be a drawback. In fact, watching this film in it's native language brings you even closer to these characters when you realize how familiar life is as a human being, no matter where we're from. How much we all have in common when it comes to matters of the heart. It's a nice little extra to be reminded of, since it's something we sometimes tend to forget.

My praise cannot be more genuine, heartfelt and complete. Get this film. Your day will be made by it. You'll be telling your friends about it. In a busy life where there's a lot of distraction, you'll remember for a moment how wonderful it is to be alive and in love - and how that's worth everything in the world.

This movie has most of the things that a typical teen movie always has: archetype characters, feel-good ending, a huge score to reinforce emotional response.

But it does it much better from the acting (not Disney robots), to the cast (not all perfect beatiful people, just normal people), to the score and script and dialogue.

It is very good and very likeable and sweet (I watched it 10/15 years ago and I still remember a lot of it and how I felt after watching it).

For me, when watching this movie, one has to keep in mind any other teen-love movies you might have seen. Heck, ALL teen movies are fair game. Then, when watching this movie, notice how those other movies begin to crumble under their own stupidity, and jump off large cliffs like celluloid lemmings. Now THAT'S great filmmaking. Great films go straight for the jugular of other films; thinning out the herd.

Fucking Åmål takes adolescence, and instead of portraying how wonderfully blissful it all was, it shows how it was a time in everyone's life for over-dramatizing and acting mostly petty. But then, out of these ashes rises something that was great about those awkward years: love. Because you didn't stop being dramatic when it came to love, but you celebrated it. Like the characters in this movie, everyone who fell in love in high school spent time brooding over class pictures, or waited by the phone for that one call. Moodysson uses the scenes at the school and the parties to allow viewers to reflect on how awkward and cruel being in high school was. But instead of carrying this effect into the lovely land of high school crushes, he instead raises them up on a pedastal. It made me wonder if i can't love like that again: with no hesitation, no complications, and with all my heart.

What makes this film great though (and not just good) is by bringing the issue of homosexuality into it, but he slowly begins to make the issue hazy and unclear so that it no longer becomes an issue except for the less developed, and unliked, characters in the film. By the end of the movie, it doesn't matter that Agnes and Elin are to GIRLS in love, but that they are two girls in LOVE. In an age where media has transformed homosexuality into more about sexuality and less about love, Moodysson flips the scales. By the end of the movie, you start to realize that Agnes isn't a lesbian, because that title is worthless. She's just a person who loves. She celebrates what she finds beautiful (Elin). Of course, Elin is the main character of the film because she is the one who changes and matures. She elevates herself out of the social stratosphere of high school lunches, and into a world without personal boundries.

Last, one has to admire the fact that Moodysson doesn't take the film over the edge, and make it too much about how girls need to look for love just amongst themselves because all teenage boys are immature. First, he portrays most all of the other kids (regardless of sex) as immature except for Agnes and Elin, not just boys in particular. Then, he allows the viewer to sympathize with Johan. Johan maybe confused and unsure of himself, but he was just as much in love with Elin as Agnes was. How easy it might have been to make him mean, stupid, and worthless, so that viewers would be happy to see Elin flee him and go to Agnes. But he's not, he's kind-hearted and genuinely seems to care about Elin. Once again, this is Moodysson using love to blind the issue of heterosexualty and homosexuality and concentrate on love itself.

Definitely a movie for the romantic, and one that will teach you how to correctly fall in love again.