Lilya 4-ever
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Lilya 4-ever (or Lilja 4-ever) is Swedish director Lukas Moodysson's third full length film. It marks a sharp change of mood from his previous two films, the uplifting love story Fucking Åmål and 1970s comedy Tillsammans. Lilya 4-Ever is an unremittingly bleak story of the downward spiral of Lilya (played by Oksana Akinshina), a girl in the former Soviet Union, whose mother abandons her to move to the United States. The story is based on the life of Dangoule Rasalaite and examines the issue of trafficking in human beings.
Plot summary
The films starts with Lilya running desperately towards a motorway bridge, with a factory belching smoke in the background, to a soundtrack of aggressive rock by Rammstein. The film then looks back on how she ended up there.Lilya's mother tells her they are emigrating to the USA with her boyfriend, but at the last minute Lilya is left behind, in the care of her aunt. A forced move into a squalid flat is only the beginning, and a succession on miseries are heaped upon Lilya, as her friend betrays her to save her own reputation, a gang viciously abuse her, and she is forced into prostitution to get by. One glimmer of hope is her friend Volodya (Artyom Bogucharsky), abused and rejected by his parents, with whom she forms a tender protective relationship. Another glimmer of hope is Andrei (Pavel Ponomaryov), who becomes her boyfriend and offers her a job in Sweden. But all is not what it seems, and only bad things await Lilya when she arrives there.
After arriving in Sweden, she is greeted by her future "employer" and taken to an apartment where he imprisons her. She is then forced to perform sexual acts with several men while her "employer" reaps all the financial gain. She then escapes with the help of Volodya's ghost (Volodya in the meantime committed suicide considering the fact that Lilya abandoned him for a better life in Sweden). She then commits suicide in the continuation of the scene from the beginning of the film.
The film's conclusion shows Lilya and Volodya, now both dead and angelic, playing blissfully on the roof of some tenement building, safe from all harm the world can do to them.
About the film
The film is set in an un-named 'former republic of the Soviet Union'; the 'Soviet' scenes were filmed in Paldiski, Estonia, a former "closed city" and base for the Soviet nuclear submarine fleet, and Tallinn in Estonia. Paldiski became a bleak enclave for ethnic Russians, mostly dependents of members of the military, who were left behind when the military evacuated Estonia. While many characteristics of the ex-Soviet world are present, knowing the position of these Russians as severely excluded residents of Estonia makes the film even more compelling. The Swedish scenes were filmed in Malmö.The film is considered by many to be very powerful and moving. Lukas Moodysson told audiences at the 2002 London Film Festival that he hoped the film would make them want to change the world for the better. Despite its bleak nature, Moodysson claims that the film is about the power of God, and shows how the human spirit clings to optimism even in the face of the most terrible adversity.
The film also arguably contains criticism of capitalism post Soviet collapse. Several times an image of the Virgin Mary appears on a wall behind Lilja next to a pornographic image (both of these being illegal in the U.S.S.R). Lilja consistently worships the image throughout before smashing it shortly before her suicide. Also, in a government building both Lilja and Volodya mention that their parents were employed there before the collapse of the Soviet Union and that they are now jobless. This is followed by Volodya reading a tribute to Lenin and the October Revolution.
The film has been shown in various countries in Eastern Europe in campaigns to stop trafficking in human beings, in particular, women. In Moldova, The International Organization for Migration has shown it to 60,000 people.
External links
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