Movie

Swedish writer-director Alexandra-Therese Keining's captivating Girls Lost is a teen body-swap scenario with a supernatural twist that navigates a skillful path through humor and revenge fantasy to touch on tender issues of gender identity and sexual confusion. Based on a prize-winning YA novel by Jessica Schiefauer, the film doesn't quite sustain its initially intoxicating momentum all the way through. But its depiction of bullied 14-year-old female outcasts getting a new spring in their step as they take a walk on the wild side of masculinity has an irresistible pull that helps counter any storytelling bumps.

The opening sequence shows main character Kim (Tuva Jagell) being pursued through the woods while a moody John Carpenter-esque electronic score pounds away. It ends up being not at all that kind of movie, and yet the horror setup isn't entirely misleading. There are hints of it also in the luscious dark tones and moody nightscapes of Ragna Jorming's cinematography.

Given that they don't fit the conventional mold of the popular girls at school, the daily lives of Kim and her best friends Momo (Louise Nyvall) and Bella (Wilma Holmen) are hell. They endure the vicious verbal and physical abuse of a nasty gang led by towering blond alpha male Jesper (Filip Vester). Their teachers stand by and let it happen, telling them to toughen up. The girls idly wonder if their lives would be easier if they were boys.

That daydream becomes a reality when Bella, who carries on her recently deceased mother's horticultural hobby, gets a weird plant seed with a gardening order. In an other-worldly development right out of Little Shop of Horrors, a whirl of molecular activity makes the plant grow overnight in Bella's backyard greenhouse into a funereally beautiful black flower circled by butterflies. The sweet aroma of vanilla proves too great a temptation and the girls drink the plant's nectar, causing them to sleep and reawaken in the unfamiliar bodies of boys.

The film's casting is terrific, with Emrik Ohlander, Alexander Gustavsson and Vilgot Ostwald Vesterlund all making convincing male counterparts for Kim, Momo and Bella, respectively. The discovery of their transformation (nicely realized by the effects department in gently morphing visuals) is played at first for low-key comedy. And while an American film would likely be coy about the physical specifics, these girls are surprised and delighted by their new penises.

Kim is especially taken with her strange new form, having confessed earlier to Momo that she sometimes feels she has a zipper somewhere that's concealing her true self underneath. Her bedroom is plastered with androgynous idols like Grace Jones, Patti Smith and David Bowie. Even her punked-out Barbies look gender neutral.

The transformation lasts only until they next drift off to sleep, and the girls make a pact to repeat the experience only if they all do it together. Even after they switch back to their original bodies, however, they carry themselves to school with new swagger and without fear, giving Kim the pluck to put Jesper in his place.