REVIEW - WE ARE THE BEST!

Confidence is key. Lukas Moodysson's punk rock comedy-drama may lack a brazen, punky texture of its own, but it's a winning testament to the kind of effect such a sensibility can have on a young life. Momentary diversions here and there sustain the gently-barbed tone, with cruelty reconfigured as satire, but Moodysson's championing of three young girls from Stockholm who only want to start a band and have some fun makes this a cheerful, optimistic film, with mild character-based humour and a rather Scandinavian strain of social and familial dramatics that doesn't gel, as infrequently as it arises. Affable young actors Mira Barkhammar and Mira Grosin play Bobo and Klara, whose distaste for and mistrust of convention and authority has broadened their cultural horizons; they see past the social conservatism that dictates the lives of their schoolmates and families, and harbour a compulsion not to rebel but to question. The rebellion comes when they intuit that their questions have no satisfactory answers, and the only reasonable course of action is to rail against the machine. They cannot play any musical instruments, but decide to form a punk band, and enlist, as the only musically-capable member of their group, outcast christian Hedvig, whose transformation from sheltered god-squadder into independent punk-rocker is handled with subtlety and insight. Moodysson has a confident grasp of each moment in each scene, though he eventually can't imbue any of it with much purpose, and the girls' story begins to seem aimless. It's mostly a lot of fun to watch though, in particular the more boldly comedic sequences, including a priceless scene where the hopeless Johan Liljemark attempts to coach the trio on how to play the electric guitar, unaware of Hedvig's superiority until she quietly issues him with the biggest take-down in any film outside of a boxing ring.