GurlyIamBeach Instant Favorite.

Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Bluebell Alcock Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

runamokprods More powerfully tense than many thrillers full of action and blood, this finds the terror in the small gestures of growing up, and the enormous implications behind them.In the main story, adolescent Emma befriends cool girl Cassandra as they train to be part of a team that does gymnastics on horseback. Both friends and rivals, director Aschan manages to load almost every scene between the two with incredible unease. It seems as if at any moment they are either going to tear each others clothes off and make love, or kill each other, or kill someone else -- any and all combinations seem possible as they test their limits on the ragged edge of adulthood.At the same time, Emma's 7 year old sister Sara is pushed by the world around her to become aware of her body with alternating pride, curiosity and shame, and her nascent sexuality leads to some wildly uncomfortable scenes with the adult men in her family. This never crossed the line into exploitation, but it effectively made me want to jump out of my skin, while making me ponder the deeper thematic and psychological/social issues.One thing bothered me; the very end of the film seemed to over-simplify the mysterious complexity of much that had preceded it, reducing the story to something more pedestrian, and taking some of the considerable wind out of the film's sails. But this is still one of the better films about the terrors of youthful sexuality I've seen in a long while.

Paul Magne Haakonsen Alright, the DVD cover has actress Mathilda Paradeiser standing and holding a gun, which pretty much Sells the movie on a wrong Foundation. Sure there was a gun in the movie, but it wasn't a particularly big part of the story or the movie that it should be included on the movie cover.While the acting of Mathilda Paradeiser (playing Emma) and Linda Molin (playing Cassandra) was quite good and nicely carried the movie, then they were not able to save the awful script and storyline. It was as if director Lisa Aschan was abruptly cut short before having the chance to tie the ends together and actually make this a coherent and interesting story."Apflickorna", its original Swedish title, is unfathomably slow paced and took an hour and twenty-four minutes to tell almost nothing. There is a sort of beaten down and depressing sensation all throughout the entire movie, which in itself was a good achievement in setting the mood.It was a struggle to get through this movie, and the constant hope of it picking up pace and becoming entertaining just never rooted and took place.Now watched, this movie will be put on the shelf to gather dust and slowly fade into oblivion.

Guy SHE MONKEYS is Swedish, so it's guaranteed that it'll be depressing. It's a small social drama about the relationship between two adolescent girls in an equestrian gymnastics team. Inevitably you have the older, more confident girl and the timid new girl. They bond as friends and compete as rivals but their relationship is thrown into flux when their roles begin to change. There's a lot of just below the surface emotion but thankfully it never boils over into an actual lesbian romance. That said, it never really amounts to much either. There's so much silence that you could accuse the film of being visual poetry or of being boring and be equally right. There's also a weird subplot about the precocious love of the timid girl's younger sister for her babysitter that is borderline creepy/realistic. At the end of the day, you either like this sort of film or you don't.

Chris Knipp Swedish first-timer Lisa Aschan's She Monkeys is like Céline Sciamma's 2007 French coming-of-ager Water Lilies/Naissance des pieuvres, about two girls who bond around a challenging female sport, in Water Lilies water ballet, and here, equestrian gymnastics. There is a popular, or more confident, girl, and the more timid newcomer, though the distinction gets twisted along the way when the strong girl turns out not to be invincible. Here it's introverted Emma (Mathilda Paradeiser) and more experienced equestrian Cassandra (Linda Molin), who become playful friends, and later when Emma turns out to be strong and promising, rivals. This is different from the French film in that the two challenge each other to more real wrongdoing, and Emma has a seven-year-old sister Sara (Isabella Lindquist), whose desire to become a woman and precocious lust for her babysitter cousin Sebastian (Kevin Caicedo Vega) leads her to extravagances of her own. In fact when the energy begins to fade in the Cassandra-Emma relationship, Sara comes in handy by providing comic relief that also pushes boundaries a bit.She Monkeys may push boundaries a bit more, but it is less successful at showing its two "girlfriends" in a real social context than the French film is. Nonetheless She Monkeys clearly establishes that Lisa Ashan, whose first feature this is as Water Lilies was Sciamma's, is a talent to watch with a distinctive style.Apflickorna (the original title) is the fifth and last of a series of low budget first films chosen by competition for the Swedish Film Institute's Rookie Project. It won the Gothenberg, Sweden festival's Nordic film prize and critics' award. Seen and reviewed as part of the San Francisco film festival of 2011, this debuted in the US at Tribeca in 2010.