SHOW ME LOVE
(FUCKING ÅMÅL)
dir. Lukas Moodysson, 1998
89 mins. Sweden.
In Swedish with English subtitles.
MONDAY, MAY 22 – 7:30 PM with a special introduction from Kyle Turner
(This event is $10.)
SATURDAY, JUNE 3 – 5 PM
SUNDAY, JUNE 11 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 28 – 7:30 PM
Spectacle is thrilled to host a limited engagement of Lukas Moodysson’s coming-of-age classic FUCKING ÅMÅL, kicked off on May 22 with a special introduction from queer film critic Kyle Turner followed by encore shows in June to commemorate Pride Month.
If there’s a tactile and poetic quality to Lukas Moodysson’s FUCKING ÅMÅL (known in the states as SHOW ME LOVE) it’s probably owed to the Swedish filmmaker’s background as a poet. To tell the story of two high school aged girls, bad girl Elin (Alexandra Dahlström) and wallflower Agnes (Rebecka Liljeberg), Moodysson shot his debut feature on Super 16mm, lending his dive into the psychic landscape of young women who feel the claustrophobia and malaise of insularity an invigorating textural quality.
While Agnes nurses a nearly debilitating crush on Elin, compounded by a general sense of outsider-ism at school, Elin starts to feel the crush of the aimlessness and dullness of Amal’s terrain. The school parties and insistent boys give her nothing; but there’s something about Agnes’ sweetness and vulnerability that contrasts with her rashness that creates a magnetic charge between the two.
To commemorate the release of The Queer Film Guide by Kyle Turner, the critic and author is thrilled to present the first of many of Moodysson’s impressively tender and empathetic works at Spectacle, where FUCKING ÅMÅL finds love in what feels like a hopeless place.
KYLE TURNER is a queer writer based in Brooklyn, NY. His writing on film, queerness, and culture has been featured in W Magazine, The Village Voice, Slate, GQ and the New York Times, and he is the author of The Queer Film Guide: 100 Films That Tell LGBTQIA+ Stories out May 16 from Smith Street Books and Rizzoli. He is relieved to know that he is not a golem.
Special thanks to American Genre Film Archive.