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Movie of the Week 

MOVIE OF THE WEEK September 16, 2025: LIVE A LITTLE (LEVA LITE)

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Swedish writer-director Fanny Ovesen makes her feature debut with the thought-provoking drama Live a Little, which follows two young women on a long-anticipated backpacking adventure through Eastern Europe — a trip that starts out full of promise but is all too quickly tainted by doubt and fear after a night of partying leads to one of them waking up naked in a stranger’s bed, with no memory of what happened.

Laura (Embla Ingelman-Sundberg) and Alex (Aviva Wrede) are best friends from Sweden who’ve been planning an interrail summer for two years — just them, their backpacks, and the couch-surfing app that’s going to help them meet new people and find free places to stay. Everything seems to be going according to plan in their first stop, Warsaw. But, further into the trip, Laura — usually the more cautious of the two — lets loose at a club and gets blackout drunk, only to find out that she ended up sleeping with fellow couch-surfer Lucas (Oscar Lesage). Since she can’t remember whether it was her choice or his to have sex, Laura can’t be sure it was something she consented to, and the uncertainty leaves her anxious and self-destructive.

Ovesen follows Laura as she spirals through self-recrimination, guilt, worry, defiance, and risky behavior, her doubts eating away at her and leading to friction between Laura and Alex; between Laura and her loving (if insecure) boyfriend, Elias (Odin Romanus); and — most devastatingly — between Laura and herself. Ingelman-Sundberg delivers a powerful performance as a young woman on the cusp of real adulthood who finds herself suddenly adrift and in need of solid ground so she can retake control of her own life and decisions.

Ovesen tells Laura’s story with care and empathy, drawing her inspiration from something similar that happened to her own friend during a trip in their early 20s. As a result, she makes Live a Little into the kind of slice-of-life drama that reminds you just how easy it is for one moment (or a series of moments) to have a lingering impact — but also that it’s important not to let those moments forever define who you are. — Betsy Bozdech

Team #MOTW’s comments:

Loren King Swedish filmmaker Fanny Ovesen’s spirited and realistic Live a Little is a road trip movie without much road. Young friends Alex (Aviva Wrede) and Laura (Embla Ingelman-Sundberg) are traveling through Europe via rail with backpacks and without plans, finding couches on which to crash. They arrive in Warsaw, the first stop on their summer adventure, and soon hit the clubs for a night out. It’s all understandable, youthful, reckless behavior. But as the trip progresses, the carefree journey leads to coming of age entanglements and realizations. The young actors are compelling and Ovesen creates an intoxicating mix of intimacy and powerful realism.

Nell Minow: Live a Little is perceptive about the early days of adulthood, learning to be more careful and more honest with yourself and with those around you. Embla Ingelman-Sundberg and Aviva Wrede give sensitive, nuanced performances, with believable chemistry as the closest of friends, whether they are sharing secrets that make them laugh or those that trigger tears, disappointment, and anger. Writer/director Fanny Ovesen has the courage and honesty to let the story and the characters be as messy as real life. She knows these characters, and she cares about them.

Leslie Combemale This film is a walking advert for trigger warnings. That’s not to say that it isn’t absolutely SPOT ON in capturing way too many young women’s experiences in navigating interactions as girls in a man’s world. There are so many women that will absolutely recognize their own experience or that of at least one close friend. Live a Little (Leva Lite) is also hauntingly accurate in showing how longtime childhood-based friendships can go off the rails, but very much from a female perspective. Beyond the script, Martin Dirkov’s score and Mathilde Frindlung’s editing are MVPs in bringing further emotional weight to great performances by co-leads Embla Ingelman-Sundberg and Aviva Wrede.

Jennifer Merin Swedish writer/director Fanny Ovesen’s coming of age drama, Live a Little, is about two young Swedish 20-something best girlfriends who find themselves at odds with each other while on a couchsurfing vacation journey from Stockholm to Eastern Europe. This is a trip they’d been planning for several years and they start out with exuberance and great expectations. They just wanna have fun — meet local folks, eat local food, shop by day and club at night. They are self-assured and fearless in finding stay-with-me-for-free lodging via the Internet, but they are still kids and are basically naive about the ways of the world. They find that couchsurfing and encountering other travelers can and does present complications beyond their expectations. The trip tests their loyalty, and becomes an adventure of self-discovery and evaluation, and a challenge to their since-childhood friendship. Live a Little is a genuinely engaging buddy road trip with an especially engagingly
feminist ticket.

Liz Whittemore Filmmaker Fanny Ovesen’s drama Live a Little finds two best friends on the European trip they’ve been planning for two years. Alex is boisterous, carefree, and seeking sexual adventure, while Laura is more reserved and in a committed relationship. When a night of partying leads Laura to question her reality, the trip turns into a spiral of memories, confessions, and exploration. Ovesen captures how the thrill, complications, and awe of travel change the rules of the mundane, giving one permission to, perhaps, shirk the norms. But every decision has consequences. Performances are fantastic. The dialogue reaches every facet of womanhood. Live a Little beautifully explores the fragility, complexity, and unbreakable strength of female friendships.

Cate Marquis In Swedish writer/director Fanny Ovesen’s Live a Little, two young women, best friends since childhood, embark on long-planned trip across Europe from their native Sweden. They plan to couch-surf in each country, arranging a place to stay with people they find online, to meet people, eat and drink during the day and go clubbing at night. The plan is for them to bond while exploring Europe, and “go wild in Europe” as the bolder one puts it. She’s single but the other one has a boyfriend back home, and plans to skip the sex part. But they are more naive than they think they are, and things start going off plan even from their first stop. The trip reveals cracks in the friendship but also opens the door to self-discovery, in this 20-somethings coming-of age tale.

FILM DETAILS:

Title: Live a Little

Director: Fanny Ovesen

Release Date: September 16, 2025

Running Time: 98 minutes

Language: English, Swedish with English subtitles

Screenwriter: Fanny Ovesen

Lead Performers: Embla Ingelman-Sundberg, Aviva Wrede, Oscar Lesage, Odin Romanus

Distribution Company: Breaking Glass Pictures

AWFJ Movie of the Week Panel Members: Sandie Angulo Chen, Betsy Bozdech, Leslie Combemale, Pam Grady, Loren King, Cate Marquis, Jennifer Merin, Nell Minow, Sherin Nicole, Liz Whittemore

Previous #MOTW Selections

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Edited by Jennifer Merin

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Jennifer Merin

Jennifer Merin is the Film Critic for Womens eNews and contributes the CINEMA CITIZEN blog for and is managing editor for AWFJ.org, the online magazine of the Alliance of Women Film Journalists, of which she is President. She has served as a regular critic and film-related interviewer for The New York Press and About.com. She has written about entertainment for USA Today, The L.A. Times, US Magazine, Ms. Magazine, Endless Vacation Magazine, NY Daily News, New York Post, SoHo News and other publications. After receiving her MFA from Tisch School of the Arts (Grad Acting), Jennifer performed at the O'Neill Theater Center's Playwrights Conference, Long Wharf Theater, American Place Theatre and LaMamma, where she worked with renown Japanese director, Shuji Terayama. She subsequently joined Terayama's theater company in Tokyo, where she also acted in films. Her journalism career began when she was asked to write about Terayama for The Drama Review. She became a regular contributor to the Christian Science Monitor after writing an article about Marketta Kimbrell's Theater For The Forgotten, with which she was performing at the time. She was an O'Neill Theater Center National Critics' Institute Fellow, and then became the institute's Coordinator. While teaching at the Universities of Wisconsin and Rhode Island, she wrote "A Directory of Festivals of Theater, Dance and Folklore Around the World," published by the International Theater Institute. Denmark's Odin Teatret's director, Eugenio Barba, wrote his manifesto in the form of a letter to "Dear Jennifer Merin," which has been published around the world, in languages as diverse as Farsi and Romanian. Jennifer's culturally-oriented travel column began in the LA Times in 1984, then moved to The Associated Press, LA Times Syndicate, Tribune Media, Creators Syndicate and Arcamax Publishing. She's been news writer/editor for ABC Radio Networks, on-air reporter for NBC, CBS Radio and for Westwood One's America In the Morning. She is a member of the Critics Choice Association in the Film, Documentary and TV branches and a voting member of the Black Reel Awards. For her AWFJ archive, type "Jennifer Merin" in the Search Box (upper right corner of screen).