Show Me Love (1998)

Show Me Love (Lukas Moodysson, 1998)
Swedish Title: Fucking Åmål

The original title of the film is "Fucking Åmål," referring to the overall attitude one of the characters have for her small hometown. Elin (Alexandra Dahlström) is Åmål's prettiest sixteen year old girl. She's shallow and rumors conceive her as a loose girl, which isn't exactly false. While she's still a virgin, she flirts and makes out with almost everyone while complaining how boring it is to live in her small burg (she whines about how everything is late in her town, that the "in" things are already "out" when they arrive in her town, referring to rave parties). Agnes (Rebecka Liljeberg) has lived in the town for two years but hasn't exactly made enough friends On her birthday, her mom decides to put up a party for which she disagrees to, embarrassed by the fact that no one will be coming. Agnes is lesbian, and is in love with pretty Elin.

Bored and without nothing new to do, Elin and her sister decides to just go to Agnes' party. Elin's sister dares Elin to give Agnes a kiss for twenty crowns. She agrees, but then, she subsequently retreats and instead, leaves the melancholic party to hang out with the popular kids in town. After a while, she returns to Agnes and the two dare each other to hitch a ride to Stockholm. Inside the car, as the radio plays the song "I Wanna Know What Love Is," the two continue the kiss Elin suddenly terminated during the party. The two have fallen in love, but is now faced by the stigma that attaches to lesbian relationships.

Show Me Love is Swedish director Lukas Moodysson's first feature film. It's quite remarkably well-made. Moodysson, despite the frequent amateurish techniques (sloppy close-ups, incongruent camera movements), possesses an immaculate detailing of the small-town teenage issues and a loving understanding on the dilemma that falls upon the two characters. Moodysson might be a little more affectionate towards the pathetic Agnes, who spends her time writing secret notes in her personal computer and hanging out with an also-friendless girl who is reduced to her wheelchair and disabled basketball matches. Elin is portrayed as the sexual gravitational center of the small town --- attracting the timid nice guy Johan (Mathias Rust) to admire her and subsequently court her. Elin's reaction is less than admirable, using Johan as a cover for her secret homosexual longings. Moodysson's portrayal of Elin is problematic turning her turn-around a bit surprising and unrealistic, despite its beautifully emotional heftiness.

Show Me Love remains to be Moodysson's most sincere film (although I haven't seen Together (2000)). Here, he isn't faced with pressing issues such as white slavery in his highly acclaimed Lilya 4-Ever (2002). He isn't belittled by the shocking imagery of A Hole in My Heart (2004; although there are painful sequences here such as Agnes's suicidal attempts), or experimentations as in his latest, Container (2006). Moodysson concentrates primarily on the compelling development of teenage romances, which probably resulted from the rebellious trait that springs forth from the absolute boredom and predictability of their sleepy little town. Also, Moodysson is at his most emotionally convincing self here. His use of songs, his on-the-point visuals, his relative ease in bringing out excellent performances from the young cast, culminates in those gorgeous moments wherein the characters are faced with seemingly petty dilemmas, but to them, would mean the world. With Show Me Love, Moodysson seems to have achieved the difficult --- he has expanded small-town teenage conflicts and angst into a pressing and emotionally rich tale of romance against all odds.

Container (2006)

Container (Lukas Moodysson, 2006)

After Lukas Moodysson's rather pretentious and critically panned last feature A Hole in the Heart (2004) which focuses mainly on four characters, centering on the introverted teenage central character who observes his father making home-grown pornographic videos, one would expect for Moodysson to follow it up with something more akin to his first three features which offer narratively conventional yet rewarding cinematic experiences. Instead, Moodysson comes up with Container, which seems to be even more dense and pretentious than A Hole in the Heart. Shot in low-grade black and white video, haphazardly edited into a nebulous string of unconnected images ranging from the utterly banal to surprisingly striking, Container looks and feels like the work of a film student rather than an internationally known director. It's more similar to Jonathan Caouette's Tarnation (2003), a cinematic autobiography which features personal home videos and pictures of the director edited together to form a coherent and very introspective look at his homosexual life. Yet Container is not personal at all, unlike Caouette's Tarnation. Container distances its viewer by separating the visual and aural values creating an air of discordant and jarring experience that is devoid of any emotional impact, aside from stereotypical depression.

The visual component of the film features one central character --- an overweight man (Peter Lorentzon) who is seen prancing around, donning women's clothes and performing some other acts that suggest some emotional or mental disturbance. Another character features --- a petite Asian girl (Mariha Åberg) who is shown as the overweight man's inner self. The two are infrequently shown together except on a couple of situations --- when the man is carrying the girl, or when the girl is tending to the man. Aside from those situations, the two are filmed separately, sometimes in similar situations, suggesting the identity of the two characters. The scenes where they are shown together suggest the relationship of the outward and the inward personalities --- that the outward character is forced to carry the inward character as a burden, but in return the inward character tends and takes care of the troubled outward character. The visual component is an accurate conveyance of what a transgender individual might feel, and despite the amateurish production, the visual component is quite effective in its portrayal.

More important and resonating than the visual component is the aural component. The voice is supplied by American actress Jena Malone (who is also one of the actresses the character pretends himself to be). She speaks in hushed whispers, as if speaking from a covered closet. Malone speaks of many things --- of her experiences as a trans gender, how she hates homosexuals and differentiates herself from that, how she collects things and buys junk from Ebay, her idols ranging from Savannah, a classic suicidal porno actress to Britney Spears. The voice is quite updated on celebrity news. There's a frequent appearance of anecdotes regarding Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston's break-up, Paris Hilton, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, which transform into social and pseudo-philosophical commentaries and introspective intimate discussions about her own experiences.

The visual and aural components do not match up, but almost magically, Moodysson is able to give resonance to both components when experienced together. I don't think the visual component will work without the voice, but the voice, in particular, is added a certain value when coupled with the black and white images that are shown. Sure, it's undeniably pretentious and the only reason it might have a wider audience than its similar student-made counterparts, is because Moodysson attaches his name to it. However, Container has a certain compelling quality that just simply can't be dismissed. It's nothing like Tarnation, which is both accurate, intricate, and intimate. Container is more interested in detailing the sickness and the depravities of our modern society by showing the incongruent personal and fictionalized experiences of a trans gender individual. Moodysson attaches footages of a desolated building in Chernobyl and its surrounding areas, including several point-outs to the tragedies that have struck the world (the Iraqi War, the Chernobyl fallout, a kid dying while playing soccer, Kylie Minogue's breast cancer), to connect and juxtapose the desolated interiors of the troubled trans gender individual with the confusion that surround present and modern living.