By Ezra Stead

Show Me Love, Sweden / Denmark, 1998

Written and Directed by Lukas Moodysson

This gentle, insightful and wonderfully realistic comedy-drama from Sweden gets my vote for best film you’ve probably never heard of. We here at Movies I Didn’t Get feel it is our responsibility to not only debate the merits of popular and overrated films that we didn’t get, but also to champion those that we did get, and which we feel are underrated, or in this case, simply not well enough known (we also like to just review movies, as you can see by scrolling through our archives). At any rate, amidst a constant stream of banal, exploitative and unconvincing teen movies, Lukas Moodysson’s Show Me Love stands out as a testament to the truth of living through that difficult age between twelve and nineteen, especially when one is perceived to be “different” for whatever reason. As the great Roger Ebert said of this beautiful, understated masterpiece, “this film loves teenagers; most teen movies just use them.” I rarely quote another critic, but this is so astute, I couldn’t resist.

Moodysson’s most well-known film is Lilya 4-Ever (2002), a harrowing tale of teen prostitution in Eastern Europe and the conditions that can lead to it, there or elsewhere. The first time I saw Show Me Love, I was not aware it was made by the same director and I had not yet seen any of his other films, which also include Together (2000) and A Hole in My Heart (2004), the latter of which is even more disturbing than Lilya. However, even without prior knowledge of Moodysson’s always excellent work, there is a sense of impending doom throughout his first feature, a feeling that something terrible might happen at any moment; this is, in many ways, a perfect representation of what it is like to be a teenager in modern times.  Read More