Every
genre of film has the potential for disaster, but certainly,
the most disaster-prone, in my cynical view, is that of the
teen flick. Maybe it's just me and my cynical disdain for
adolescent hijinks, but most teen movies embrace stupidity
far too much for my liking. Nobody wants to alienate the teenage
demographic, of course, so no judgement is passed on the sights
of dumb teenagers wasting their brains on partying, alcohol,
drugs, and shallowness.
Another
genre prone to disaster is the so-called gay and lesbian movie.
Of course, the following opinion is mere nonsense and should
not be taken as accurate science, but the disaster occurs
when these films act like one big inside joke that only radical
gay people will understand (I doubt that even normal gay people
would understand!) - luckily, I think the only real disaster
in the lesbian arena was Claire of the Moon, a really bad
picture which could not think of a good plot or good writing,
but only the kind of propaganda which claims that the only
good person is a lesbian. Of course, propaganda is one thing,
but when there is no other thing, then it really sucks!
Show
Me Love has flaws, but that has nothing to do with any propaganda.
The film is a Swedish teen-oriented film, and is somewhat
cute and insightful. Certainly, teens in this situation will
find something to relate to here.
Agnes
is just celebrating her sixteenth birthday, if you can call
this celebrating. She has no friends, people in school make
fun of her, and she has a secret; she is a lesbian, and is
in love with another girl, Elin, one of the more popular girls.
Her mother, believing that if Agnes builds a party, they will
come, plans a birthday party and sends invitations. Of course,
nobody shows up, except for one person, a wheelchair-bound
girl whom Agnes, surprisingly, insults by saying she only
pretended to be her friend because she had noone else to hang
out with.
Later
on, as Agnes is even more depressed than before, guess who
shows up? Elin and her sister. The two had snuck out of the
house to find a party, and show up to Agnes' house mainly
because they want somewhere to go, and Elin does not want
to go to a certain party where a certain guy whom she doesn`t
like is expected to make the moves on her. Elin, shockingly,
tells her sister that she will kiss Agnes, who is rumoured
to be lesbian, for 100 dollars. And so she does. But neither
girl can predict what the ramifications of this event will
be.
What
is interesting is that it is mostly Elin who has the emotional
turmoil. Almost immediately after the kiss, she wants to apologise
for hurting her. And when she and her sister finally go to
the real party, she is clearly disturbed, because she realizes
that she liked what happened. And she even dreams about Agnes.
But in a teenage society where girls are expected to go out
with the coolest guys in the school, she, as one of the more
popular girls, can`t get away with liking another girl, a
total nerd at that. So she quickly gets into a relationship
with the very guy she claimed not to like. I thought that
it was interesting that I found Elin, a shallow teeny-bopper,
to be more touching than Agnes, a dark, self-loathing sort.
Elin is more touching because we realize that she is not the
shallow monster that her other friends and sister are. Well,
she`s shallow, but not a monster. This is clear when after
the party is over, she returns to Agnes' house to apologise,
and they even go out and talk about life, and their future
aspirations. After Elin is shocked to learn that Agnes has
never kissed a girl before, she becomes impulsive and attempts
to flag a vehicle to Stockholm in hopes that Agnes will find
some nice girls to sleep with. (This whole sequence is more
attuned to this couple as real people than the entirety of
Better Than Chocolate with its couple) At the end of the night,
they share a passionate kiss (to the strains of Foreigner!!!).
But the next day, things change, not because Elin is heartless,
but because she is scared, and that`s where the new boyfriend
comes in.
I
was planning to launch into another conservative debate about
the oddity of 'gay teenagers' - since teenagers don`t really
know who they are, and, just as some people question sex education,
maybe they ought to also question the whole gay pride thing
when dirrected to teens, because in both cases this may push
tender minds to things they might not otherwise enter. I already
said all of this in my review of All Over Me, and don`t have
much need on repeating it again. Especially since this movie
is much better than All Over Me, and also because any fool
can see that there isn`t excatly a lot of good pickings amongst
the teenage males in this group, so who can blame Agnes and
Elin for wanting to get together??? They would, in fact, look
adorable together, if the movie bothered to show us a relationship.
The ending is hopeful and positive, but I wanted to see more.
All
I can say is that I had a very strange week watching videos.
I managed to see not one, but two lesbian flicks in one week.
I rented this movie because I feel it is my duty to rent all
the foreign films at the local Blockbuster, so it can justify
supplying them. Then I rented Better Than Chocolate because
my lesbian friend really liked it and wanted me to see it.
Well, now I can no longer say that I`m a complete prude. Now
I can say that I kind of, sort of, understand lesbians now.
David
Macdonald
David
Macdonald's Movie Reviews
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