Så jävla easy going

I watched So Damn Easy Going, a 91-minute Swedish coming-of-age drama directed by Christoffer Sandler, as part of this year's ReelAbilities Film Festival. The film stars Nikki Hanseblad as Joanna and Melina Benett Paukkonen as Audrey. With vibrant cinematography and heartfelt storytelling, the movie explores adolescence, mental health, and queer identity through the lens of a teenager navigating life with ADHD.

I watched the film from the comfort of my own home. Though I didn't have a friend to watch with, my small dog kept me company-and I found myself pausing often to reflect on the emotions the film brought up. While I couldn't discuss the film aloud with anyone, the story stayed with me pretty long after.

This Swedish coming-of-age film follows 18-year-old Joanna, a high schooler navigating life with ADHD in a household struggling with emotional and financial strain. When she can no longer afford her medication, she turns to creative and risky ways to cope, and strains even her closest relationships. Alongside all this though, she begins a touching and refreshingly grounded romantic connection with Audrey, a confident and calm classmate who offers the emotional stability Joanna deeply craves.

What stood out most to me was the authenticity of the characters, especially Joanna. Her portrayal felt raw and real, her ADHD symptoms portrayed not as caricature or fake or anything, but as part of her vibrant, complex identity. Her coping methods, from swimming to quiet moments of connection, felt deeply personal and reflected real-world struggles. I appreciated as well how her relationship with Audrey unfolded, since it was tender and queer-affirming without falling into forced drama or pushed down onto us.

If I had one critique, it would be the subplot with Matheus. While it offered an opportunity to explore Joanna's impulsivity and her strained friendship, the conflict around the stolen money and subsequent resolution felt a bit rushed or didn't go anywhere for the most part. Still, it did serve a purpose in reflecting how Joanna comes to terms with her behavior and the consequences of her actions.

In terms of disability representation, this film did a wonderful job showcasing it. This film clearly breaks away from the tired tropes often used in media depictions of neurodivergence. Joanna is not defined solely by her ADHD, but is funny, messy, loving, anxious, and alive. The film avoids the "supercrip" narrative (where disabled characters must prove themselves extraordinary to be valued) and doesn't reduce her to a tragic figure or comic relief or any of those overused tropes. Instead, her neurodivergence is treated with nuance and respect, allowing for us to connect with her as a fully realized human being.

This kind of storytelling is what disability representation should look like, multi-dimensional and deeply human. I'm grateful to have seen it through the ReelAbilities festival and look forward to seeing more films that follow this path.

The Swedish movie Så jävla Easy Going (2022) was shown in the U. S. with the title So Darned Easy Going. It was written and directed by Christoffer Sandler.

The movie stars Nikki Hanseblad as Joanna, a young woman with ADHD, who really, really needs her medication. (Not only does she need it to concentrate, but she sees continuous flashes of light when she's not medicated.)

Nikki's prescription has run out, and she can't afford to buy more medication. Despite this crisis she finds that she is attracted to a young woman at school. She hasn't thought of herself as a lesbian, but she's beginning to change her mind. What will happen next?

We saw this movie at Rochester's great ImageOut LGBTQ Film Festival. It has a weak 6.6 IMDb rating. I thought that it was much better than that, and rated it 8.

P. S. If you enter Så jävla into Google Translate, you'll see that the U. S. title is a euphemism.

The best part of this film for me was the acting. While I do really appreciate the story, the storyline and the theme, because I have seen so many films both domestic and international I didn't see that much new ground in the way of the writing. I have seen bi and gay films, films where young characters struggle and struggle trying to figure things out. But the acting is so well done by everyone, there wasn't a weak actor , all of them had good skills especially the leads.

Universal themes and images that did actually translate well , both lead actors should be proud of their work and the commitment they made to the roles.

A great film is always accompanied by a large soundtrack Kite - "Dance Again" I found this movie really nice despite the various dramas that are at the center of this story This film still manages to be a delicate and sweet movie, it manages to face To deal with certain topics by conveying happy serenity and desire to continue without watching too much behind, I am really happy to have seen this film, and I saw it more than once upon a long distance, the final part I think that something is truly unique Fantastic something difficult to find you can see it 100 times and you will cry 100 times, I love this Movies.

It's often little things that take a screenplay, an acting performance, or both to the next level. In So Damn Easy Going, there's a moment when the movie's teenage protagonist Joanna - already reeling emotionally from a day navigated without her ADHD medication - is hit between the eyes with the epiphany that she has feelings for the new girl in school, Audrey. Nikki Hanseblad, in a magnetically charismatic screen debut surely portending of great things to come, so perfectly conveys a mix of charged realization and stubborn confusion. All with a simple look.

As someone diagnosed with ADHD myself, I can empathize by experience with anyone suffering from a condition that basically strips away your ability to filter, prioritize or organize in any way the myriad issues, tasks and problems that come your way in an average day. It can cause others to think of you as scatterbrained, disorganized, incapable, even uncaring (or YOU THINK it is causing others to think of you this way).

From a similar perspective I applaud the stroke of genius in using ADHD as one of the structural lynchpins from which to develop Joanna's story arc. Whether by design or not, So Damn Easy Going hints at a position some take on ADHD medication, namely that to fight the symptoms of the condition it must "dumb down" or desensitize the patient to external stimuli. In the context of the screenplay, one might ask perhaps whether it is only Joanna's forced vacation from her medication that allows her to start working through the issues she was facing in her home life. Confronting issues is hard, it's messy, it's awkward. If you never face them, though - if you desensitize yourself to them - they will bloat inside you, find fault lines, and one day break you into pieces. The off-her-meds Joanna is certainly awkward and messy, but she's moving forward, she's healing, she's learning the type of person she really wants to be.

The movie's highly accurate and insightful depiction of the world of an ADHD sufferer (the flashing lightbulbs, the respite provided by swimming - both brilliant) are buttressed by a tight story structure and some fine supporting performances, notably from Shanti Roney as Joanna's father and Melina Paukkonen (also in an impressive debut appearance) as Audrey. Hanseblad and Paukkonen have chemistry aplenty on screen and the development of their relationship, the ups and the downs, never seems forced, a testimony I suspect to much work behind the scenes and some fine directing work from Christoffer Sandler, who also wrote the screenplay.

Perhaps the greatest compliment I can pay to all those involved in the making of So Damn Easy Going is that watching the movie made me want to do my own due diligence "maintenance check" on whether I am being as open to all life's possibilities as I should be. I'm a lot older than Joanna but I'd like to think it's never too late to truly figure out what type of person you are, and to BE that person with all your heart. < Cue lightbulb flash >.