****

Director: Lucas Moodysson

Duration: 102 minutes (Sweden)

Let The Right One In for music-fans. No, this doesn’t have blood spewing at its mouth, but it does have a similarly frosty and woozy Scandinavian atmosphere summoned with typical Lucas Moodysson (Lilya 4-Ever and Show Me The Love) style.

The year is 1982. The place is Stockholm. Two class chums, Bobo and Klara, roam the streets. They’re a bit weird. Alas, there is no room for them at the cool circle inn. To attempt a reverse with their fortunes, they decide to form a band. Not just any band, but a punk band.

The trouble is they can’t play any instruments and everybody tells them punk is dead. Practicality and public opinion is no obstacle to this ebullient and pugnacious pair though, and they soon enlist the help of classical guitar player/born-again Christian, Hedvig.

When this duo becomes a confrontational trio there is no stopping them. Their public awaits.

We Are The Best! is a big hearted paean to the discovery of music and the developmental axis-shift of teenage years. It is a film laced with the wide smile of cosy nostalgia. A time for punk rock, physical records and the global village minus the term global (more of a village then).

It is evocative of a period when information was scant – the odd newspaper article here, a photograph there – and when new bands would rely on people exchanging those notorious plastic shells known as cassettes. It was a time when mystique was in rude health.

Fast forward to the present day, when we are saturated with information, and it is a giddy concoction, particularly as music lover, to do a bit of timetravelling back to this era.

This is a wonderful film. Full to the brim with brio, it is a tender and acutely observed portrait. Funny too. 

We Are The Best! pulses with the infinite possibilities of youth, when time and ambition are unshackled by the jailer of life; responsibility and rationale.

We Are The Best! is in cinemas from today, 18th April 2014.

Here is the trailer: