Love them Swede's

I saw Let the Right One In last week, this is a Swedish film and one of the best films of 2008. It reminded me of another Swedish film of this Century Show Me Love. On the surface the two films would seem to have very little to do with one another. If you had to label each film with a type or label, Let the Right One in Would be labeled with Vampire Film, and Show Me Love as Lesbian Film. Neither of those descriptive words comes anywhere near describing these films. These films are about loneliness and connection. Both films feature main characters who are adolescents and outsiders, who are the victims of teasing or bullying. There must be something in the Swedish mindset that allows them to capture these feelings of isolation and aloneness better than anyone else.

Let the Right One In is a deliberate film full of observation and beauty, that features as a main character a vampire, but this is not a horror film, really it’s film about finding friendship and love. It’s intriguing for the way it presents what it might be like if there really were vampires, and the twists it adds to that mythology and for how truly it observes the myths. But that is too limiting a description because it’s so much more than that. That is the description that would turn off so many viewers who would truly admire the film if they saw it. What it is really about is a young boy who is an outsider, who is bullied and has no friends who finds a friend and more someone to love. They are both outsiders as she is a vampire, but you could almost say she is a vampire in the way a charagter in another film might be a person with cancer. She is not a villian, she is a different type of animal, but like the boy she needs someone as well.

Show Me Love is a film that all parents of Teenagers should see. There is a scene where one of the main characters extracts razor blades from a razor. Many films will have scenes like this, but only in this film do you really feel you understand why. Not that you want her to do it, but because of the complete truth with which the film has presented her life up until that point you feel like you understand why she feels that way. This scene is only ¼ of the way through the film. What is invaluable about this though is the insight we can gain the understanding that can help us observe our own children and their world. We forget as years pass how it feels to be young and this film captures it in spades. It also reminds us of the understanding we need to have for where they find love.