So Damn Easy Going

Joanna is eighteen, lives in Gothenburg, and has ADHD. Without her medication her brain feels like a flashing amusement park. The problem is money: her father is at home, deep in depression and on sick pay that barely covers the rent, and the pills cost more than they have. So Joanna gets creative, with schemes that range from clever to disastrous. And in the middle of all this chaos she meets Audrey, calm, warm, a little mysterious, and starts falling in love at the worst possible moment.

Christoffer Sandler adapted the film from Jenny Jägerfeld's much-loved Swedish young adult novel, and he gets the hardest thing right: the tone. It is funny, fast and a bit anarchic, like Joanna herself, but it never treats her condition as a joke. The film lets you feel what it is like to live inside her head, the noise and the speed and the exhaustion, and also how much she has to hold together at home. Nikki Hanseblad is a discovery in the lead, sharp-tongued and vulnerable, and her scenes with Shanti Roney as the father are the quiet heart of the film.

It is a coming-of-age film, a queer love story and a portrait of a family living on the edge of poverty in one of the richest countries in the world, and somehow it never feels overloaded. Small, honest and full of life. The kind of Nordic film that goes nowhere near the big festivals and deserves a much wider audience.