I like European coming-of-age flicks because usually they are refreshingly cliche-free and truthful. "Friends Forever" starts like that but unfortunately lets itself down with some unrealistic about-faces in its characterisation.
Kristian is a shy boy who starts school in Copenhagen and is soon befriended by Henrik, a mature nonconformist who practices tai chi and astronomy. However, Henrik is believed to be gay by the other students in the class, particularly roughneck Patrick, so Kristian distances himself from him.
Kristian becomes fast friends with Patrick and his gang when, in one horrible scene, he helps the lad set on a poor girl in class and rip her top off. Kristian is further surprised, however, to find that Patrick is gay, and is in a relationship with an older man. Meanwhile, he sees an ageing female pop singer in a nightclub, and makes the hard-to-swallow decision to begin a sexual relationship with her, despite her being at least thirty years older than him, and looking it.
The girl who he humiliated tells him to "forget about the sweater thing", and starts a relationship with him too, despite the fact that when we last saw her she was struggling to cover herself, shrieking and crying and running out of the room, humiliated and traumatised.
He's also shocked to his core by his friend's homosexuality, shaking and crying that "it's not normal, nobody else is like you guys"... but yeah, you guessed it, does a pretty quick turnaround on that one.
The movie begins fairly realistically but ends up going for a quick, unbelievable resolution, and even ends with a musical routine. Shame, it could have been better.
