User reviews

Big-city girl goes from flashy(but hollow) Stockholm to northern Sweden to meet her father for the first time in a decade. Once there, things do not work out quite as she expected, but she meets some honest country folk who teach her a thing or two about life.

A predictable, intolerably bland, and simplistic yarn.

However, there is a time-capsule aspect to it that is somewhat interesting. There is so much bad eighties hair and music on display that at least hardcore eighties aficionados will have something to keep them entertained.

This movie makes an interesting double-feature with Jägarna. In Jägarna, the country-bumpkins of the north have more in common with the ignorant inbreds of Deliverance, while in this film they are honest, hard-working, and nice. It makes for an interesting juxtaposition of two different paradigms of the same people.

'Nobody can love like us', is the presumptuous title of the movie. I would say it's not to be regarded as a bold statement of the movie makers, but a way of showing the teenage mind. To teens, so many things are 'nobody', 'everybody', 'never', 'always', and so on. Surprisingly, the movie is soft and low-voiced, with a delicate, humble depiction of a teenage love story.

This is additionally surprising, when considering the director of it. Hildebrand made a few teen movies before this one, but they contained a rather simplified moral and a two-dimensional, sort of Disney cosmology. I was quite surprised to see him manage a story of this sensitivity and refinement.

The story is not just a meeting between a boy and a girl, but also between countryside and urban life. It's great fun to see the twain meet, and be reminded of the often remarkable differences.

Furthermore, there is great charm in how the growing attraction and the intimacies between the teens are shown. There is beauty in it, and genuine sympathy. So the love story becomes sort of a threesome, since the movie is, in itself, a loving observer of it.

People familiar with Hildebrands work, know he made several strange movies with similar themes, youth in revolt - portrayed in peculiar ways. This movie however, is probably his best film. While Scorupco is great in an early role, the real star of the film is unknown actor Håkan Lindberg in the role of Johnny. He is 100% believable in every scene and gives the movie a quality you're not used to seeing in Hildebrand films. The story is not bad, and the Jämtland surroundings are incredible. If you overlook the two strange Hildebrand "speak to the camera" scenes, this is actually an underrated film.