Ever since this film came out I wanted to see it, but this took so long that I finally saw it from TV. Fucking Åmål shows the lives of teenagers of the small Swedisch town Åmål. Agnes (Rebecka Liljeberg) moved there one and a half year ago and has problems making friends and her fancying girls instead of boys making her extra insecure. She leads a withdraws life with her music an her diary.
Elin (Alexandra Dahlström) on the other hand is a popular girl at school, because she is quite beautiful and everybody wants to be her friend. Her best friend -though- is her older sister Jessica (Erica Carlson). Elin is also not too happy with her life. Åmål is the most boring place and so retarted that by the time something is hip and cool there, there is already something new in the rest of the world. She fears a future in Åmål that is as boring as her life so far. When Agnes and Elin more or less as a joke meet at Agnes’ birthday and the two sisters find out about Agnes’ homosexuality, the sisters bet that Elin doesn’t dare to kiss her which she does, leaving Agnes in even greater distress and she even becomes the laugh of the school when everybody gets to know of her sexuallity. Elin on the other hand initually think being a lesbian is quite cool and since she wants to be different from the rest, she first makes jokes about becoming lesbian herself, but finding out that this would cost her the life with lots of friends and attention that she got used to, she represses the idea by starting to date a boy that has a crush on her. In the end she dumps Johan (Mathias Rust) in favour of Agnes.
I always thought that Fucking Åmål was a feel-good kind of light comedy, but I actually found it quite heavy. Two girls in difficult periods of their lives brings ideas of films like Heavenly Creatures or The Virgin Suicides. Another thing is that when things finally get better for the two girls after they came together, the film suddenly stops, not showing what ‘the world’ thinks of the two lesbian teenagers or how the relationship developes. Quite strange actually. The film is also really short, a little under 1,5 hour.
Overall I found Fucking Åmål nice, but not too great definately in comparison with Heavenly Creatures and The Virgin Suicides. <3>