LUKAS Moodysson is a man for details.
When preparing to shoot his new film, We Are the Best! a drama about three teenage girls who form a punk band even though punk is as dead as Elvis, the Swedish director became obsessed with finding the right jacket for one of his actors.
"We spent a lot of time looking for the perfect jacket for her but there was always something missing."
Then he remembered his grandfather's jacket, eventually passed down to Moodysson's own teenage son, and the film was up and running.
Set in Stockholm in 1982, We Are the Best! is a return to joyous form by the director of Show Me Love and Together after the blue period of his controversial Lilya 4-Ever (sex trafficking), A Hole in My Heart (the porn industry) and Mammoth (first-world anxieties versus developing-world woes).
We Are the Best is not without its angst, but in the hands of Moodysson and his young cast this is a story where the underdogs triumph. Can't play an instrument? Hate pink leotards and disco? Who cares, just pick up a guitar and play. It's the punk credo resurrected, except this time it is 13-year-old girls doing the reinventing.
"That was the most important thing about the project," says Moodysson, speaking from Malmo, Sweden, "to make something that was full of life and hope and possibilities." The film began life as a graphic novel by Moodysson's wife, Coco. Moodysson saw a lot of his younger self in there too.
"I was also 13 years old in 1982 and I grew up with the same kind of music and wanting to look the same way, dress the same way."
His cast were born in the late Nineties, early Noughties, cultural light years away from 1982, but Moodysson says he did not have to give the young actors a history lesson about the way things were back then.
"There was no internet and no iPhones in those days but otherwise a lot of the feelings are the same."
As in his other films, a lot of time was spent in casting and preparation before the cameras started rolling. Moodysson, 45, never considers these days wasted. It doesn't matter if it is adults or children, he says, it's all about creating a friendly, safe atmosphere where it is OK to improvise or make mistakes. "I'm really happy to be surprised as a director," he laughs. In We Are the Best! it was particularly important that the young actors were up for a dare: brutal, home-made punk haircuts and all. "They knew it was part of the package so it didn't come as a surprise," says Moodysson.
It has been five years since Mammoth, the Michelle Williams and Gael Garcia-Bernal drama, which was seen by some critics as too navel-gazing. Moodysson did not enjoy the experience of making a relatively big-budget, mainstream film. It involved too much time away from his wife and three children, for a start, and the switch from Swedish to English was jarring.
"I underestimated how difficult it would be to make a film in English. I thought I was quite good at speaking and understanding English, but it is still a very tiring process of all the time translating in your head and not finding the right words."
He spent the four years between Mammoth and We Are the Best! writing two novels and teaching film. A published poet from the age of 17, Moodysson has often found refuge in writing. That, and The Cure. Both he and his wife are near-life-long fans of Robert Smith and his band. As luck, or good planning, would have it, when he was last in London to promote We Are the Best! they managed to catch the band live. His favourite song is A Night Like This ("Say goodbye on a night like this; if it's the last thing we ever do").
Ask him what it is about The Cure which so strikes a chord, and Moodysson hesitates like a believer asked to chart their faith. "It's a bit difficult to explain because it means so much to me." But then he rallies. "There are some things you grow up with and they connect so deeply to you that it's difficult afterwards to understand why because they are just a part of you. I listened to The Cure from 13. It's a part of my life. Except for my closest family no-one else, no artist at least, has meant more to me than Robert Smith."
Moodysson has his own admirers. At the end of the 1990s, the legendary Swedish director Ingmar Bergman called Show Me Love "a young master's first masterpiece". I wonder if such a commendation from on high was a blessing or curse. Definitely the former, says Moodysson.
"I'm just happy that he was positive. But the thing he said that has been the most helpful for me was about my second film, Together. He said it was a nice film but not as good as the first one. Then he said, 'Now he just has to keep on working hard'. That's been my motto ever since. Bergman told me to work hard so now I have to work hard."
Cineworld, Renfrew Street, Glasgow and Cameo, Edinburgh, from today; Glasgow Film Theatre, April 25-May 1; Belmont, Aberdeen, April 25.
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