SHOW ME LOVE
(FUCKING ÅMÅL)
Dir. Lukas Moodysson, 1998
89 mins. Sweden.
In Swedish with English subtitles.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 10 – 10 PM
THURSDAY, JANUARY 18 – 10 PM
MONDAY, JANUARY 22 – 7:30 PM

If there’s a tactile and poetic quality to Lukas Moodysson’s FUCKING ÅMÅL (known in the states as SHOW ME LOVE) it’s probably owed to the Swedish filmmaker’s background as a poet. To tell the story of two high school aged girls, bad girl Elin (Alexandra Dahlström) and wallflower Agnes (Rebecka Liljeberg), Moodysson shot his debut feature on Super 16mm, lending his dive into the psychic landscape of young women who feel the claustrophobia and malaise of insularity an invigorating textural quality.

While Agnes nurses a nearly debilitating crush on Elin, compounded by a general sense of outsider-ism at school, Elin starts to feel the crush of the aimlessness and dullness of Amal’s terrain. The school parties and insistent boys give her nothing; but there’s something about Agnes’ sweetness and vulnerability that contrasts with her rashness that creates a magnetic charge between the two.

Special thanks to American Genre Film Archive.