Lukas Moodysson chooses life

By Nicholas Barber

When Lukas Moodysson brought us “Together”, he brought us together. One of the most beloved films of the 21st century, “Together” (2000) was a huggable comedy-drama about growing up in a Stockholm commune in the Seventies. If you’d seen it when it came out, and skipped Moodysson’s later films, you might assume that by now he was a leading chronicler of middle-class dysfunction: a writer-director to rank with Mike Leigh, Alexander Payne and Noah Baumbach. But Moodysson had other ideas. He followed “Together” with “Lilya 4-Ever”, “A Hole in My Heart” and “Container”, three films so bleak and rebarbative that they could have been a deliberate attempt to lose all of the fans he had just won.

Now, nearly 14 years on, we’re getting “Together” again. The glorious “We Are the Best!” finds Moodysson back in Stockholm, and back in the era of his own childhood, his surrogates this time being three tomboys of 12 or 13 who form a punk band in 1982. It’s a bittersweet, thrillingly authentic paean to adolescent friendship and the sheer joy of making a racket with a guitar and drums.