The Best Films of the Zeroes: 5

5. FUCKING AMAL. (2000)
Directed by Lukas Moodysson

First things first, FUCKING AMAL, also known as SHOW ME LOVE, was actually made in 1998, but by virtue of its release date in March 2000, it’s eligible for this list. This was the first that the world saw of Lukas Moodysson, and it remains his best film; in fact, given his recent output, it certainly seems likely that we’ll never see him back on this sort of form again. In recent years, the balance of pain and pleasure in his films has become completely out of whack, to the extent that you get A HOLE IN MY HEART, a film so skewed towards the pain axis that it’s almost unwatchably pretentious, or CONTAINER, a film completely and utterly inaccessible.

This, though, his debut, is a phenomenal piece of filmmaking, as, to a lesser extent were his two follow up pictures, TOGETHER and LILYA 4-EVER. He seemingly had the world at his mercy; here was a director perfectly able to balance the sweet and sour of life, to beautiful effect. In FUCKING AMAL, in particular, he captures what it’s like to be young, confused and in love. It’s more impressive because he totally conveys the feelings of adolescent despair that precede any new love affair.

Of course, one reason for FUCKING AMAL’s notoriety, aside from its untranslated title, is that the lovers at the centre of its story are two teenage girls. One of them, Elin (Alexandra Dahlstrom), is popular, beautiful and occasionally cruel, while the other, Agnes (Rebecka Liljeberg), is awkward, an outsider, castigated by the popular clique as a lesbian, even though she feels like she’s kept it a secret. She is, of course, in love with Elin. Every day she writes a love letter to her, on her computer. At her birthday party, Elin is bet that she won’t dare kiss Agnes. She accepts, and so starts one of the decade’s most enduring love stories.

The relationship between the two girls is exquisitely observed. Moodysson’s skill with actors would do him proud on his next two pictures, but was never as revelatory as it is here. Hollywood made some good teen movies in the zeroes, films like MEAN GIRLS. There were also several brilliant films about being teenagers, such as MEAN CREEK, but I can’t remember a mainstream American teen movie that deals with characters that are believable as real people, rather than empty stereotypes. FUCKING AMAL is one such movie. It treats its characters, and thus its audience, with respect. These girls are as vulnerable, funny and smart as the kids you and I went to school with, it’s immediately an open movie, rather than something closed off my having to adhere to generic conventions at the expense of realism.

Being a coming of age film, and one about sexual awakening, not to mention the fact that it’s a Swedish film about teenaged lesbians, you might reasonably expect to find a film that pushes boundaries, but not here, Moodysson’s affection for his characters makes that refreshingly absent. The film is about the characters, rather than any word that could be attributed to them. Their lesbianism, if that’s what it is, rather than a teenage crush, doesn’t define them. It’s a film about how boring it can be to be a teenager in a small town – their ennui is recognisable to anyone who grew up in such an environment. We grow to like both Elin and Agnes, not only because they seem like real people, but also because most of us can remember what it feels like to be a teenager, and feel so far away from freedom, that the overwhelming sense that you’re missing out on something better, somewhere else, that is happening to someone else is almost unbearable.

The highest European film on this list, FUCKING AMAL works on so many levels, it’s a brilliantly observed love story, but also a superb film about alienation, both from where you live, and what you perceive as society’s norms. In Agnes and Elin, we have two heroines of our time. It’s not just that they’re a gay couple, although what’s more wish-fulfilment than the most popular and beautiful girl in school coming out? It shows a bravery and singularity of purpose that can’t help but inspire audiences, particularly those at the same age, or with doubts about their sexuality. It’s also a superb teenage rallying cry, Amal is the name of the town in which the two girls live, and the sense of disdain that they have for it is infectious; one of the film’s funniest scenes comes right at the start when Elin learns that raves are no longer cool – they haven’t yet come to Amal, so it’s uncool before she’s even had the chance to try it.

That’s just one of the film’s great scenes. There are at least another three that stick in the mind, at Agnes’ birthday party, when she insults her only friend, a girl in a wheelchair, who is socially, even lower down the food chain than she is. It’s refreshingly honest that the film shows it’s heroic outsider in a negative light, but incredibly perceptive that it doesn’t have the insulted bear a grudge, such insults and tantrums are part of teenage life, and Moodysson, and we, understand this. It’s a subtlety that would not be afforded to an American teen movie. The second scene is a glorious kiss, stolen, and set to the sounds of ‘I Want to Know What Love Is’ by Foreigner, which shouldn’t work, but totally does. The defining moment of the film, though, comes at the end. After locking themselves in a closet at school, the two girls burst out, hand-in-hand, as Elin shouts “We’re going to fuck”. And if that mixture of bravado and hidden vulnerability doesn’t sum teenagerdom as you understand it, then I despair.