Fucking Åmål (English title: Show me love) is a Swedish movie that came out in 1998. I watched it in the cinema when it first came out and I remember really liking it. I had been planning to re-watch it some day, and yesterday was that “some day”.

Last week this movie was mentioned in a Swedish newspaper where they were listing “100 emotions”. I got the urge to watch it again after 11 years and ordered the DVD.

Fucking Åmål is about two girls, Agnes and Elin (played by Rebecka Liljeberg and Alexandra Dahlström), who live in a small town in Sweden. Elin is pretty popular and Agnes doesn’t have any friends. And the thing is that Agnes is in love with Elin. That’s the main story, but the movie also depicts (teenage) life in a Swedish small town.

I think almost everyone my age in Sweden has seen this movie. I think it’s very good. It’s amazing how much of the dialogue I remember, seeing how it was over a decade since I last saw it (perhaps I watched it on TV some time, but still).

I enjoyed re-watching this movie. It wasn’t quite the emotional roller coaster that I had expected, but it still touched me and I wanted to watch it again as soon as it was over. I can really empathize with Agnes.

You should watch it if you’re into angsty love stories, or good love stories. It has decent English subtitles. If you get it on DVD I can warn you that the picture is very grainy.

If you wonder about the title, Åmål is the town where the story takes place and “fucking” is used as in “It’s because we live in fucking Åmål”.

If you’ve seen the movie, there’s one scene where Elin and her sister go out to use the mirror in the elevator when trying on clothes and the elevator starts moving. A similar thing happened to me when I lived in Spain. I had bought a pair of trousers and went to the elevator to use the large mirror to see how they looked and locked myself out of the apartment - and I didn’t have any shoes, so I had to sit there and wait until someone came home. Luckily I had trousers on, unlike Elin in the movie

IMDb page