Show Me Love
Director: Lukas Moodysson
Year Released: 1999
Rating: 3.0
Might have been great - it has great empathy for teenage confusion and boredom - but I couldn't get past the feeling that Moodysson overdoes the awkwardness and torment in the first half-hour (ex: who leaves love letters on his/her computer screens?). The two leads are revelations, and their dialogue sounds appropriate for their age group; the movie treats its subject and the characters' predicament with respect, and the vision of high school as being perilous and uncomfortable rekindles old memories (the cafeteria scenes are perfect, with the different cliques arranged by the hierarchy of "coolness"). Considering the girls are so young, however, something in me keeps thinking it's just a phase for them, but maybe that's my pre-parental rationalizing kicking in. Was a colossal hit in Sweden and deservedly so; poet-prodigy Moodysson has quite a career ahead of him.
