5 Underrated Movies About Fictional Bands

Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s A Star Is Born remake was responsible for more than just a career reboot and Gaga-sized quantities of memes. Also born: enough new movies about fictional bands to fill a festival. Perhaps you’ve heard of Her Smell, where Elisabeth Moss plays against type as a Courtney Love figure who doesn’t move through the scene so much as lash out at every surrounding molecule of space. Or Vox Lux, which charts Natalie Portman’s rise to Black Swan-ish outsider diva. Or Teen Spirit, about a small-town Polish girl (Elle Fanning) who takes her love of Robyn and No Doubt to an “Idol”-esque TV show. Even the much-maligned but nevertheless much-awarded Bohemian Rhapsody might be considered fictional in a way, considering how they portrayed Freddie Mercury.

It’s easy to see why these kinds of films appeal to studios. In an age when movie ideas are judged for their franchise potential from the get-go, films about bands provide a ready-made secondary income stream: the soundtracks, the potential live performances, the fanbases of whoever’s tapped to write the music. Even video games like “League of Legends” are launching band spinoffs. The rise, fall, and rising again of an act also provides a ready-made story arc, while the excesses of the music industry make for potent fodder along the way.

But the best music movies are about something more potent: that elemental force that arises when musicians come together in the same room and give themselves over completely to the sound. There are a number of beloved classics in this vein, but we thought we’d highlight a few lesser-seen films about fictional bands.

Breaking Glass (1980)

England

A showcase for avant-garde musician Hazel O’Connor, whose soundtrack of the same name went Top 10 in the UK, Breaking Glass is the closest of the movies here to the standard rise-and-fall story arc. But it’s no redemption arc, instead a musical tragedy along the lines of The Red Shoes, plus some fascist undercurrents that play a lot differently in 2019 than 1980. The usual music industry crud builds and builds: payola, censorship (one producer suggests editing a lyric’s swear words to “punch him in the nose! nose! nose!”), harassment, controlling managers turned romantic partners. And its heroine eventually succumbs on stage to all this accumulated mental poison.

But the film has a trick. Much as Vox Lux rewrites history so that Sia’s music is the sound of 1999, a year when Sia was barely out of jazz club trenches, Breaking Glass assigns Bowie levels of fame to its too-spiky-for-the-business protagonist, Kate, all extreme closeups and desperate drive. Combined with the soundtrack by O’Connor, among the more underrated artists of the new wave era, the story becomes something else: not an artist felled by fame, but an artist misserved by the industry. (You can rent or buy this movie via Amazon or iTunes.)

Starstruck (1982)

Australia

Re-released a few years ago (and recently highlighted by The Ringer), this Australian comedy depicts the music industry at its most gonzo. Like many young dreamers, teenage bartender Jackie and her cousin Angus want to make it big in the music biz—in part because the money might save the family pub. Unlike many young dreamers, however, they go about this by having Jackie walk a tightrope alongside a skyscraper wearing a sequined cape, red granny boots, a harness, and large fake boobs, before throwing fireworks down at the street and staging a dramatic fall. (It doesn’t get less ridiculous in context.)

Directed by Gillian Armstrong and designed by Rocky Horror alum Brian Thomson, the ensuing musical is peak farce—a number performed by synchronized swimmers is among the more normal ones. Jo Kennedy brings plenty of screwball slapstick as Jackie: singing and flailing on an ironing board, dangling above a stage in a cupcake dress. And Ross O’Donovan is great as that well-known archetype, the ’80s smirky-kid grifter; his final plan, after some misadventures, involves disguising as backstage crew and dive-bombing a talent show stage. What better way to celebrate our current Summer of Scamming? (You can rent this movie via Amazon.)

Bandits (1997)

Germany, with subtitles

Directed by Katja von Garnier, best known stateside for Iron Jawed Angels, Bandits follows four musicians who are imprisoned for, among other things, defrauding and/or killing their abusive husbands. They start a band as part of a rehabilitation program, then use it as an opportunity to break out. A label, headed by a cartoonishly coked-up record exec, recognizes the potential publicity supernova in a fugitive rock group (the tagline “band, plus tits!” is suggested at one point) and signs them, but they can’t play a show without the cops showing up.

As high concept as Bandits is—there’s a hint of Thelma and Louise in there, plus several decades’ worth of prison exploitation films—it doesn’t quite hew to formula. The band’s rise is hampered by the slight complication of being on the lam. The closest thing to a love interest is a hostage the band takes after a show (Calvin Klein underwear model Werner Schreyer, basically in the role of Calvin Klein underwear model), but he is unceremoniously kicked off the bus at the first sign of sexual drama. Instead the movie delves into other, less explored themes: music as a channel for repressed feelings or mental health struggles; band camaraderie that isn’t friendship exactly, but a shared bond of nihilism; and an ending that involves snipers, rooftop leaps, and a beefed-up cover of Saint Etienne’s “Hobart Paving.” (You can buy this movie via Amazon.)

Linda Linda Linda (2005)

Japan, with subtitles

The title of Linda Linda Linda is taken from a single by the Japanese pop-punk band the Blue Hearts, specifically its sudden surging chorus. (Andrew W.K. knows it—he covered the track in 2008.) The song is beloved by a few Japanese students (one played by Cloud Atlas and Kingdom’s Bae Doona), who start a band called Paranmaum and cover it for their school’s cultural festival, recruiting a Korean exchange student as their vocalist.

As much a coming-of-age film as a band movie, Linda Linda Linda is thoroughly unrushed, spending as much time at rehearsal as it does on the phone with teenage crushes. Present throughout is a sense of sheer glee, whether it’s the girls crate-digging through a box of tapes or just jamming together. One of the students dreams of opening for the Ramones—the perfect band for the movie, really, given their large, welcoming fanbase and the exuberance of their music. It’s that same exuberance that powers Paranmaum’s finale performance, which of course pulverizes. (You can buy this movie via Amazon.)

We Are the Best! (2013)

Sweden, with subtitles

Another film about teenage rockers, this one based on Coco Moodysson’s graphic novel Never Goodnight. Like the group in Linda Linda Linda, the band is comprised of a couple of middle school friends, the kind who in a different era (the film is set in the ’80s) might join a Girls Rock Camp but instead recruit another student to round things out. The mousy, extremely Christian classical musician Hedwig has in chops what the other two have in attitude.

There’s more of a cavalier current here. The girls are always positioned against men: men in bands, men at school, men in the family, all sneering to some degree. Of all the musicians on this list, Bobo and Klara are the youngest, and they fuel their music with the realest, most visceral kind of teenage rebellion—the kind that’s against pretty much anything that just happened. They change a song about how much oil companies suck to a song about how much parents suck, after one of them barges in on band practice with extreme dad energy and a clarinet. (You can buy or rent this movie via Amazon or iTunes.)

All films featured here are independently selected by our writers and editors. However, when you buy or rent something through our retail links, Pitchfork may earn an affiliate commission.

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