Show Me Love

By the time rave parties reach the small Swedish town of Åmål, magazines have already moved them from the "what's hot" to the "what's not" list. That's the cross borne by Elin, the pouty teen-drama queen at the heart of Lukas Moodysson's delightful debut. Marching around the school cafeteria in sexy tanktops and too much lipstick, Elin assures the world she'll get out someday -- she'll be an actress, she'll be Miss Sweden, she'll be a lesbian if that's what it takes. Bored witless, she and her sister attend a birthday party for Agnes, a bookish classmate far outside Elin's social orbit. Agnes's party is a bust, yet the girls become unlikely friends and, eventually, tentative lovers.

Moodysson stages their first big kiss to the swell of Foreigner, and he shoots in a grainy film stock reminiscent of Lars von Trier's Dogma crowd. But he's not out for haughty laughs. Show Me Love is a marvel of compassion, delivered pitch-perfect in that universal language -- teenspeak -- by the radiant Alexandra Dahlstrom (Elin) and Rebecca Liljeberg (Agnes). The film may gloss over the tribulations the girls are likely to face if they're not just experimenting. But its final, triumphant jab at small-mindedness truly deserves to be called the feel-good ending of the year.

-- Scott Heller