Party hard and longing for real love.
A teenage girl is in love with a girl of the same age, but she’s interested in boys, and she loves to drink alcohol. She’s not the brightest girl in town, and she has a reputation for sleeping with every boy in town. That’s okay, she’s only 14 years old! The girl who’s in love with her isn’t popular. She has only one friend, and she’s frustrated since she doesn’t think she’s pretty and nobody wants to be her friend. Will she open up to the party girl?
Fucking Åmål aka Show Me Love, is a Swedish classic, and I’m embarrassed to say that this was my first time watching it. The movie is short with a runtime of around 86 minutes. It should and could have been at least 15 minutes longer, but at the same time, the movie never gives you time to breathe.
So the party girl is the girl at school you knew would have 10 kids before she was 20 years old. It’s the girl you want nothing to do with if you have style and are smarter than the other brainless boys. She isn’t a likable character, and her mother isn’t a mother. It’s sort of the sister who takes care of her. They like to party hard, doing some hard drinking and hard f-ing. Not that we see anything to that in this movie.
This is a small movie with few characters who go to school, party when they can, and dream unrealistic dreams that never will be fulfilled. The movie focuses mostly on the party girl and her sister, while the girl who has no friends feels like a secondary character since she spends a lot of her time alone or with her parents. There’s an incident where she insults the only friend she has, and she loses her best friend! She’s so brutal when she insults her best friend, so you sort of hate the girl you should feel sad for.
The young actors are excellent! Especially the two leading actresses are some of the best and most natural actors I’ve ever seen. The most impressive one is Alexandra Dahlström, who plays the wild, energetic, and very lost party girl. What a natural charisma she has! She takes you back to when you were a stupid teenager and hung around with even more stupid teenagers. But this character is in a league of her own!
Fucking Åmål aka Show Me Love gives you restless, confused teenagers who have so many dreams and wishes, and they are so self-centered. This is one of the best movies in this genre, so just watch this Swedish classic if you like a teenage movie that feels realistic and which has a lot of energy because of the excellent acting.