Review
of Show Me Love / Fucking Amal by
Sarah Warn,
July 2002
Much
has been made
ofthe fact that the Swedish film Show Me Love
(directed
by Lukas Moodysson and
originally titled Fucking Amal) was so popular when it
premiered in 1998 that it unseated Titanic at the box office in
some countries.
But
the two films actually have more in common than their success,
for they both tell stories of love and courage in the midst of
the worst of human nature. In Titanic, the betrayal,
greed, and mob mentality is triggered by impending death; in Show
Me Love, it's triggeredy by puberty.
The
movie follows Agnes (Rebecca Liljeberg) and Elin (Alexandra Dahlström),
two high school girls stuck in the small town Swedish town of
Amal, which they despise (hence the original name). Agnes is in
love with classmate Elin, who barely knows Agnes exists until
Elin kisses her on a dare one night and sets in motion a chain
of events that will force them both to make significant decisions.
When
the film opens,Elin and
Agnes are drowning in the inevitability and narrow-mindedness
of their world, where girls are not encouraged to
dream big, but to cultivate expertise in "appearance,
clothes, and makeup" and other support functions:
ELIN:
Do you know what my nightmare is? That I'll live here
in Fucking Åmål and have a family and children
and a car and a house...all those things. And then my
husband will leave me for a younger and prettier girl,
so I'm just left with screaming children. It's completely
meaningless!
That
this same complaint is made by legions of girls in
small towns and suburbs across America is just one
of the reasons this film cuts across national and
cultural boundaries so well. Show Me Love is
as much about the universally stultifying effects
of sexism on girls as it is about homophobia or love.
On
the surface, Elin is a popular, life-of-the-party type of
girl, but she exhibits all the characteristics of a girl
on the verge of coming out. Her extensive forays into heterosexuality
have left her bored, even as her sister chides her for making
out with "seventy-thousand" guys.
Elin
is desperately searching for something that she can't quite
name, and unable to find it, she's drinking and experimenting
halfheartedly with drugs to escape. She blames the town,
but as she illustrates in conversation with Agnes, what
Elin is really fighting is herself:
ELIN:
Why are you so weird? I mean, you're not stupid or anything,
just different.
AGNES (smiling): You are weird too.
ELIN: Am I? I mean, I want to be weird. Or not weird,
but I don't want to be like all the others. Though sometimes
I think I'm just like everyone else.
It
is precisely because Agnes is so different that Elin is
simultaneously drawn to and repulsed by her.
