Film i Väst ABDEC 06, 2012 14:15 CETExclusive interview with Lukas Moodysson telling us about the new film ‘VI ÄR BÄST!’ / WE ARE THE BEST!Lukas Moodysson with the team and actors on the set of WE ARE THE BEST! Image: P-A Jorgensen / Copyright Memfis Film.
- It was a long time since I thought it was this much fun to film!
For years, Lukas Moodysson was tired of seeing movies, standing behind a film camera and the film world in general. Now the desire is back.
WE ARE THE BEST! is his eighth feature film, also produced by Memfis Film and co-produced by Film i Vast.
Meet the director and writer on the recording scene in Trollhättan.
Lukas Moodysson's not really very keen to talk about WE ARE THE BEST!. Certainly there are explicit intentions and a screenplay based on his wife Coco Moodysson's comic book ‘’Never Goodnight’’. But making a movie is more like "a gamble."
- I'll see if it gets reaction as I expected or if there is something else. It is as difficult as getting an overview of an entire football game while playing the game, he says.
The film takes place in Stockholm in 1982 and is about Bobo, Klara and Hedvig. Three girls who are twelve or thirteen years. They hack around the streets and babbe. They are brave and tough and strong and weak and confused and crazy.They can fend for themselves too early in life. They heat fish sticks in the toaster when mom is at the pub. Starting a punk band without instruments to play, even though they all say that punk is dead.
Children and young people are a recurring theme in many of Lukas Moodysson's films, Show Me Love, Together, Lilya 4-ever, Mammut.
- I had decided to stop making movies because it was so boring to do the former, Mammut. The only reason to make a new one was to once again be working with children. I was tired of doing the kind of recordings as it is with adult actors.
Much of the work on the film is improvised. Lukas Moodysson does not look at the pre-recorded sequences during work
- You have to be inside the game to continue to talk football. It's like walking into a dream, or a kind of madness. Afterwards, I can look at what was good or bad.
Starring in three feature film debuts. Mira Bark Hammer takes the role of Bobo, Mira Grosin is Klara and Life LeMoyne plays Hedwig. Lukas Moodysson says that children are much more able to find the things themselves, adults must be controlled more. Generally, adult actresses find it difficult to fully empathize with their roles.
- Mira, Klara and Life are very talented and it has been easy to improvise. Therefore, it is wasteful not to do it.
Casting took a long time, many months, although Lukas Moodysson at an early stage was sure what who he would choose.
- I spend a long time finding the right ones. I do not think an actor can play anything. It will be anyway down to their own personality, their own experiences. It is also important to make sure the actors work with each other in various combinations. You have to try many different things with them.
Lukas Moodysson was born in 1969 and was therefore around twelve in the same year as the events of the film takes place. What does he remember? What has he brought into the movie?
- The music! It has never gotten stale for me. But it is also a fascinating thought that Coco and I grew up in various cities and lived alongside not knowing that we would meet again in life. And yet there was much that was so similar in our lives.
The autobiographical side is more pronounced in Cocos Moody's album than in the movie.
- Because I was too quick to ensure that the main character would not be called Coco in the album, but Bobo. She had to be disconnected from the reality background.
In Studio settings of Film i Vast, in Trollhättan has two apartments built on top of a giant plateau building, two feet above the floor. The plateau is used to create the illusion that you are three or four stories above ground level. The Studio floor may not be visible. Outside the window, are hanging giant backdrops with Stockholm Söder stone facades.
The recording process Lukas Moodysson describes as very good. The atmosphere of the place, the team and the actors he points to in particular.
Of course he lays down an incredible energy to everything about the film, set design, clothes, what color they'll be on the floor or what camera to use.
- I've always been more interested in details than the big picture. I can lie down and cry if it's the wrong color on the floor.
While he likes to be surprised, "it's fun if it gets so that I have not thought about it too."
Eight films, eight recordings in Trollhättan. With a residential Lextorp base.
- I've always liked to play in here in town, I get concentrated. There are great advantages to living in Lextorp and not in a hotel. But I do not have bikes, there should be provided.
With co-producer Film i Vast, he feels a great reciprocity.
- We have had great help from each other, with Show Me Love as the great springboard. Film i Vast, and Tomas Eskilsson was one of the first who was interested in the script.
- The tone of the first two films, Show Me Love and Together, I have longed for and tried to get back to the WE ARE THE BEST! Everything is in earnest, but everything is also for fun.
Text: Gus Kaage / Movie in the West. Free for publication on providing the source.
Translation by snaps!
Movie Facts
WE ARE THE BEST! Is recorded in Trollhättan and on location in Stockholm. The theatrical release is in Autumn 2013. It will be distributed in the cinemas of SF.
The film is produced by Memfis Film in co-production with Film i Vast, SVT and Zentropa, in collaboration with Danish Radio and with support from the Swedish Film Institute / film consultant Lars G. Lindstrom, Danish Film Institute and Nordisk Film & TV Fond.
Filmography Lukas Moodysson
Vi är bäst! 2013
Mammut 2009
Container 2006
Ett hål i mitt hjärta 2004
Terrorister 2003 (regi)
Lilja 4-ever 2002 (Guldbaggar för Bästa film, manus och regi)
Tillsammans 2000
Det nya landet 2000 (manus)
Fucking Åmål 1998 (Guldbaggar för Bästa film, manus och regi)
Bara prata lite 1997