GIRLS LOST
It’s a boy/girl thing
It’s hard being a teenage girl. It’s particularly hard when you don’t look like the popular girls, or act like them, or even particularly want to be one of them. Best friends Kim (Tuva Jagell), Momo (Louise Nyvall) and Bella (Wilma Holmén) have it particularly hard, their awkwardness making them the perfect target for school bullies. But everything changes when they discover a magic plant with the power to turn them into teenage boys…
Based on award-winning Young Adult novel Pojkarna (it translates as The Boys), this Swedish supernatural drama is essentially a body-swap story, but with none of the jokes you’d expect from that genre. Instead, it’s a sensitive and heartfelt exploration of gender, and what it means to be a girl – or a boy. Some of the visual metaphors are a little on the nose (butterflies? Really?) but it’s gorgeously lensed, and the transformation scenes are stunning.
The final act feels a little overstuffed, as it tries to pack in pretty much every problem a teen of either gender might encounter, and because there’s so much going on some of the emotional beats don’t hit as hard as they should. Still, better too many ideas than too few, and the quietly devastating ending leaves you with plenty to think about.