Fucking Åmål

It took me awhile but I finally got around to watching this movie. The title "Fucking Amal" didn't sound too appealing, and knowing on top of that, it was a teenage lesbian love, well..... But I loved it. The two girls, Agnes and Elin, are such wonderful characters. They are teenagers in every way but who are so human at the same time. My complaint about most movies about teenagers is that they usually lack any humanity. They are often shown very one dimensionally, very cruel, shallow, and spoiled human beings and when they are finally shown to have redeeming qualities, it usually comes across as forced and/or overly sentimental. The reason I liked this movie and these characters was that they rang true, all the way through, and their bad qualities were just really masking the good qualities that were inside them all along. It reminded me of another movie I really liked, "L'esquive" (Games of Love and Chance) a French film which came out a couple of years ago. It beat out many big budget, high grossing films at the French Academy Awards that year (The Cesars). Check it out if you liked this one!

Director Lukas Moodysson's Show Me Love is an eerily accurate commentary on 1990s teenagers in small-towns in Sweden. In fact, it's accurate almost to the point of being mistaken for Reality. It is above all other things a love story, exploring the relationship of two closet-lesbians girls at a modern High School. Many people thought Show Me Love was worth checking out for its bizarre premise alone, but only a few minutes into the movie you can tell that it is one of the most grounded, realistic portrayals in European cinema.

The dialog, for one, is fantastically realistic and blunt and this makes Show Me Love a very subtle film; it shows things exactly the way they are, down to the very recognizable expressions that the teenagers use and the awkwardness of interacting at that age. It criticizes stereotypes and socioeconomic classes and makes a point without preaching and this is something that is extremely rare in Hollywood cinema and that you can perhaps appreciate more in international films.

The film is not devoid of High School stereotypes, but they are much more subtle than you'd find in the average, American mainstream high school flick. There is no distinct jock, no perfect prom-queen and no nerd. Instead you have the seemingly popular girl, Elin (Alexandra Dahlström), who in fact struggle with many things, including her sexuality and somewhat Emo (although the term "Emo" wasn't coined yet) girl, Agnes, who is anything but popular and has mountains of worries. These two teenagers find a connection and an attraction that is entirely inappropriate. They fall in love.

Elin and Agnes are extremely likable characters; Elin despite her constant need for attention and her popular status, and Agnes despite her sometimes whiny depression. What they have in common is that they're both fundamentally lonely young girls who are fed up with their places in life, and in Åmål—("Why do we have to live here?") probably the most boring city in Scandinavia.

Show Me Love is one of my favorite movies for its simplicity. No fancy editing, no effects, no flashy lightning or anything even remotely out-of-place. In this sense, it follows many rules of Dogme 95 film-making. It just stays true to the gloomy, boring, small town that is Åmål. But don't let this scare you off, because this is not a depressing movie – it is a delightful and warming film with heart.

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.

If you believe that movies can change or really add something to make you look at life and its challenges in a different way, this movie is undoubtedly one of those which do change things! Unlike the most other movies FA moves in a mostly pure and true way. There's barely heart-melting music to evoke emotions, but strong intensity. Watching the movie, you want it to go on forever, and when it's over, you nevertheless feel perfect happiness because you've witnessed life as it is: wonderful, sad, funny and challenging. The scene when the girls want to go to Stockholm is one of the most wonderful scenes I've ever seen. An absolutely cold atmosphere and the chilly night seem to have expelled life from this little city in the middle of nowhere, but the glances of Elin and Agnes and their few words are as alive as possible. The few seconds in the car are as if they had already succeeded in getting out of their emotional misery, as if they were in Stockholm, and yet the surroundings are still the same, the same unbearable cold light and the same endless darkness beyond the street. It's not the spot that is different, but the girls themselves. For a moment they feel the enormous strength of life and love. For a moment they know where they belong to. For a moment everything is perfect. I'm in love with that scene. Sometimes words can be beautiful, sometimes authors strike divine chords, sometimes painters create mystery and dreams, but only movies can unite movements and words, glances and silence. A smile and the hurting silence, one single word spoken with the glance of love. Movies can have such an incredible power, but rarely do they get by using it. FA does! It changes, maybe it changes things of which I didn't even know they exist, there's possibly not even a word to name them. This movie is just pure, and no rational explanation or critic can keep up with its emotional intensity. Don't understand it, love it!

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).