I watched this with my girlfriend, who said it was one of the best love stories she had ever seen - I tend to agree. I am not usually a fan of love stories, preferring a good zombie flick, but this one transcended the genre by showing emotion and motivation of the characters in such an interesting way that you couldn't help but sympathize with them.

I confess that my motivations for watching it were rather base; I heard that it was about teenage Swedish lesbians, and thought that was a subject I would certainly like to explore in more depth. On the one hand, there are none of the explicit scenes I was hoping for; on the other hand, I got into the movie so much I didn't miss them.

Fans of love stories, teenage angst, girl power and anything related will definitely like this movie. Other people will like it too, you'll just have to talk them into watching it. It would certainly make a good date movie, or just one to provoke discussion and romance.

Director Lukas Moodysson's Show Me Love is an eerily accurate commentary on 1990s teenagers in small-towns in Sweden. In fact, it's accurate almost to the point of being mistaken for Reality. It is above all other things a love story, exploring the relationship of two closet-lesbians girls at a modern High School. Many people thought Show Me Love was worth checking out for its bizarre premise alone, but only a few minutes into the movie you can tell that it is one of the most grounded, realistic portrayals in European cinema.

The dialog, for one, is fantastically realistic and blunt and this makes Show Me Love a very subtle film; it shows things exactly the way they are, down to the very recognizable expressions that the teenagers use and the awkwardness of interacting at that age. It criticizes stereotypes and socioeconomic classes and makes a point without preaching and this is something that is extremely rare in Hollywood cinema and that you can perhaps appreciate more in international films.

The film is not devoid of High School stereotypes, but they are much more subtle than you'd find in the average, American mainstream high school flick. There is no distinct jock, no perfect prom-queen and no nerd. Instead you have the seemingly popular girl, Elin (Alexandra Dahlström),who in fact struggle with many things, including her sexuality and somewhat Emo (although the term "Emo" wasn't coined yet) girl, Agnes, who is anything but popular and has mountains of worries. These two teenagers find a connection and an attraction that is entirely inappropriate. They fall in love.

Elin and Agnes are extremely likable characters; Elin despite her constant need for attention and her popular status, and Agnes despite her sometimes whiny depression. What they have in common is that they're both fundamentally lonely young girls who are fed up with their places in life, and in Åmål—("Why do we have to live here?") probably the most boring city in Scandinavia.

Show Me Love is one of my favorite movies for its simplicity. No fancy editing, no effects, no flashy lightning or anything even remotely out-of-place. In this sense, it follows many rules of Dogme 95 film-making. It just stays true to the gloomy, boring, small town that is Åmål. But don't let this scare you off, because this is not a depressing movie – it is a delightful and warming film with heart.

Even if I'm not part of the target audience for a film like this, I can appreciate a good story if it's well written with interesting characters. The praise for this film from those who love it sails way over my head because I didn't find anything charming about the story or the two principals involved. One only needs to read the language from some of the characters in the movie on the quotes link from the IMDb title page to get an idea how crass this all came across. I didn't have much problem with the story's content or the fact that the main characters were lesbian, but the situations weren't handled with the kind of sensitivity that might have made me sympathetic toward the characters. On top of that, the Swedish title for the movie carries just the most negative connotation I can think of, so if it's meant to impress an audience into viewing, then I think it misses it's purpose. I watched it because it was an IMDb 'Top 250' film in 2001, but it appears that better judgment has taken hold in ensuing years. Beyond that I don't know what else there is to say.