We Are the Best! (2013)

WE ARE THE BEST!  (2013)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Lukas Moodysson
    Mira Barkhammar, Mira Grosin, Liv Lemoyne
Three Swedish schoolgirls form a band to celebrate their status as social outcasts and show that punk's not dead. Two of them are musically ignorant, but they're all smart, alienated, impulsive, and cranked on the raw energy and instinct for rebellion that go with early adolescence. Who's going to stop them, anyway? The storytelling's loose and the ending's anticlimactic, but Moodysson gets winning performances from all three girls, who play their roles as if they were living them. Their sound is ear-splitting, and the odds of them ever landing a recording contract, or a club gig, or even a few seconds of radio airplay are beyond remote, but that's not what matters here. They're friends and they're a band and they're making noise and they've got each other, and when you're 13, it just doesn't get any better than that. They're the best.