Movies about childhood are almost impossible to get right. Part of the blame for this has to fall squarely upon the tiny shoulders of the child actors. Kids are moody, they're not too bright, and as actors they're almost always terrible. But there are other, more complicated reasons why movies about kids don't often work. Sentimental directors and screenwriters—the name "Spielberg" comes to mind—have the mistaken belief that childhood is some blessed state of innocence to which all adults wish to return, and that children are somehow closer to the Divine than adults. Movies about kids fail because adults refuse to remember both the worst and best parts of being a child.

Swedish director Lukas Moodysson probably confronted a lot of negativity when he decided to adapt his wife Coco Moodysson's graphic novel Never Goodnight to film. The comic, about three girls who decide to form a punk band in 1982 Stockholm, didn't take the easy way out by making the girls relatable 16-year-old young adults. Instead, they're 13 and still obviously children. Adolescence is a shadow that follows them around everywhere, but they're still playing dress-up when they rebel against adults and talk about their crushes. Deep down, they're still kids. And I repeat: Movies about kids generally suck.

It's some kind of a miracle, then, that Moodysson somehow made the transition to film work. The movie—retitled, smartly, We Are the Best!—is terrific. Much of the credit has to fall to the trio of actors at the film's center. Mira Barkhammar stars as Bobo, a serious girl leaning toward melancholy in the aftermath of her parents' divorce. She and her charismatic best friend Klara (Mira Grosin) have recently cut their hair short and taken to sulking dramatically, even though they still need—and usually welcome—their parents' affection. The two accidentally become punk musicians—more out of spite aimed at some condescending older boys than anything else—and recruit a pretty Christian outcast named Hedvig (Liv LeMoyne) who actually knows how to play guitar to round out the band.

Klara and Bobo are learning how to be political—they spit the word "conservative" as the worst kind of insult—but they take up punk music to rebel against injustices closer to home. Their first and only song comes to them in gym class, and it's titled "Hate the Sport." The movie is set in 1982, remember, after "punk is dead" became a catch phrase, but the girls' punky spirit is intoxicating. It's the playfulness of childhood, albeit with some edgier adolescent trappings. For the girls, learning to play instruments is less about developing proficiency and more about adopting the right attitude. They rebel against their school and their parents because they can, and because it's fun, and the actors sell every minute of it with a convincing naturalism.

Not only is We Are the Best! an empowering, funny feminist film, it's the rare coming-of-age movie that perfectly transfers the exuberance and raw liveliness of childhood to its audience. Moodysson quietly subverts all the clichés of these kinds of films—especially those involving bossy Christians and the importance of dating—and keeps his camera focused squarely on the girls, because they're what the movie is all about. They're not acting, they're being, and they're having the absolute time of their young lives. If the last scene of We Are the Best! doesn't leave you giddy and giggling and in love with life, you've got to be some kind of world-class buzzkill.