"We Are The Best" features two just-about teenage girls in Stockholm in the early 80s who, fascinated by what seems to be a lingering punk scene, accidentally start a band, recruit a third girl who actually knows how to play and...well, that's about it. There is, of course, the climactic debut gig which is something of a triumph for them, if not for the audience, and if you didn't see this coming you should get out more.
It's a charming but utterly inconsequential film, boasting some nice acting from the leads, but that's about it. The three kids are all middle-class and, while one is being raised by a single mother who obviously likes to keep her, um, options open, she doesn't seem particularly alienated just somewhat embarrassed by her behaviour. The third girl, the slightly older Hedvig, is a serious, Christian classical guitarist, and at this point the film falls down seriously in plausibility, as Hedvig goes along all-too swiftly with the two exuberant punks and abandons her old identity. She also seems to come from a single-parent family, but her mother, while Christian, is sensitively portrayed as a fair and balanced woman. When Bobo and Klara cut Hedvig's hair, her approach is sly but perfectly reasonable: to make them realise not only the consequences of their actions, but that there are different forms of consent. And yet....Hedvig appears at school in an ugly knitted hat, apparently to hide her haircut, but then proceeds to tell Bobo and Klara that she was embarrassed by her mother's behaviour and loves her haircut and...no, I didn't buy it for a moment. This grave, serious Christian girl just jettisons not just her faith but any emotional baggage that might go with it (I'm speaking as an atheist, here) and it's all too glib. She teaches them chords, they teach her attitude to rebel against...well, not a lot, to be honest. None of them seem to be rebelling or making much of a statement, but they take to the stage, enrage the locals, seem very pleased with that and...that's the end. There's an end-credits scene that shows them larking about that adds nothing to the film or the narrative, and that's the end.
You won't learn much about being a teenager or about being a punk from this film. Or even much about Stockholm. You won't learn much about anything, to be honest, apart from the names of some 80s Swedish punk bands.
It's a charming but utterly inconsequential film, boasting some nice acting from the leads, but that's about it. The three kids are all middle-class and, while one is being raised by a single mother who obviously likes to keep her, um, options open, she doesn't seem particularly alienated just somewhat embarrassed by her behaviour. The third girl, the slightly older Hedvig, is a serious, Christian classical guitarist, and at this point the film falls down seriously in plausibility, as Hedvig goes along all-too swiftly with the two exuberant punks and abandons her old identity. She also seems to come from a single-parent family, but her mother, while Christian, is sensitively portrayed as a fair and balanced woman. When Bobo and Klara cut Hedvig's hair, her approach is sly but perfectly reasonable: to make them realise not only the consequences of their actions, but that there are different forms of consent. And yet....Hedvig appears at school in an ugly knitted hat, apparently to hide her haircut, but then proceeds to tell Bobo and Klara that she was embarrassed by her mother's behaviour and loves her haircut and...no, I didn't buy it for a moment. This grave, serious Christian girl just jettisons not just her faith but any emotional baggage that might go with it (I'm speaking as an atheist, here) and it's all too glib. She teaches them chords, they teach her attitude to rebel against...well, not a lot, to be honest. None of them seem to be rebelling or making much of a statement, but they take to the stage, enrage the locals, seem very pleased with that and...that's the end. There's an end-credits scene that shows them larking about that adds nothing to the film or the narrative, and that's the end.
You won't learn much about being a teenager or about being a punk from this film. Or even much about Stockholm. You won't learn much about anything, to be honest, apart from the names of some 80s Swedish punk bands.