|
 |
|
Lilya 4-Ever
***1/2
Cinema
Reviews - Week of July 4, 2003
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 18. Sweden.
109 minutes. Written and directed by Lukas Moodysson. Starring Oksana Akinshina,
Artyom Bogucharsky, Lyubov Agapova, Liliya Shinkaryova, Elina Benenson, Pavel
Ponomaryov, Tomas Neumann, Anastasiya Bedredinova, Tõnu
Kark.
I don't know how many movies we've seen about
Eastern European prostitutes -- probably not that many, to be fair -- but
it feels like we've all got pretty clear pictures of their lives. Every time
I see some shaky camcorder footage from a TV news exposé, or a blurry
picture blown up to fill the front of a Sunday newspaper supplement, the
faces of these girls somehow describe the lives around them. There's a sense
of someone without memory or a regular understanding of time and space, as
if entire days are hazy fogs of being passed around grubby hands. Do you
notice the way the girls in those pictures stand, as if they wouldn't know
where to move or look unless someone took hold of their arms or signalled
their attention in words?
"Lilya 4-Ever" is a heartbreaking
movie from the point of view of a sixteen-year old Russian girl who ends
up in that situation. It captures the feeling of life happening to someone,
misfortune spitting down until it seems like an enslaving force. The opening
sequence lets us know that nothing is going to turn out well. The girl runs
around city streets, destitute, battered, looking as hellish as the heavy
metal on the soundtrack sounds. Cut to three months earlier, before the storm
began, and impending tragedy hangs over everything.
Because the beginning has essentially told us
that every single promise will be broken, the film is full of quiet anger
-- not just for the strangers who do not care, but at people who owe love
and don't follow through. Lilya's mother goes off to America and says she'll
send for her later; it isn't true. Her aunt puts up a half-hearted act of
offering help, but is actually trying to shuffle the girl out of the way,
so she can live her own life, alone, fat and selfish. She says she can't
afford to pay the rent on the girl's old flat, and sends her to a hovel where
the bath has long gone brown. Then the aunt moves into the old flat, and
doesn't even offer the spare room.
There is a clingy little boy, who turns out to
be Lilya's only real friend. Her girl pal from school whores herself out
to a guy in a club, and tells her dad and the neighbourhood boys that Lilya
did it. One of those smarmy charmers who claims to be a 'nice guy' takes
her confidence, and offers her a chance of a better life. There's an ominous
moment when he gives her a fake passport, and says it's because they might
run into some trouble when they leave the country. And then it's a journey
to a desolate room, where a stranger keeps Lilya locked up until they have
to do the daily rounds. There's no TV, no outside contact, nothing -- surely
not every man in the city wants to grub himself all over a lifeless young
girl, but when you don't see anything else all day, it sure can't feel that
way.
Lilya is played by Oksana Akinshina, who is pretty,
blonde and tender -- she's got a fragile, exploitable kind of attractiveness
going on, which makes us yearn for her protection while making her a convincing
candidate for the kind of young woman who might go through this sort of
experience. She seems tough enough to survive, and there's a hint of glory
in a couple of late scenes where she talks back to her tormentors by plainly
and distantly laying out her human rights -- but she's no superhero, and
by the end, her view of the world has become so skewed that despair seems
like a form of rebellion.
Maybe the movie sounds like a drab and worthy
slog through misery, but it's alive, it feels true, and it got to me. It's
full of gaudy colour and knockoff shell suits, cheap alcohol from the corner
shop and even cheaper European dance music -- hardly a few of my favourite
things, but the kind of clutter that I, and probably a lot of people at or
around my age, can recognise from teenage years.
The director is Lukas Moodysson, a 34-year old
who has been hailed, by some, as the current shining light of Swedish cinema.
I get a hunch that he knows the specific textures of my generation's teen
experiences better than anyone else making movies right now. Whether he's
really down with the kids, or faking it, doesn't really matter; he taps into
the fidgety, uncomfortable feeling of those times, not just emotionally,
but right down to the décor and the soundtrack. In "Show Me Love"
(1998), he used the atmosphere to bring a sense of real pain to a simple
comic story of forbidden high school love. In "Lilya 4-Ever", he uses it
to summon all the same teenage anxieties, and take them somewhere else, to
remind us that for some kids, life doesn't come and whisk them away into
the new challenges of adulthood, but lets their inexperience get them into
trouble that nobody should have to face. This movie has all the same
manipulations that a grim social realist would use for the same subject,
but even with its cheapo camera style, it doesn't feel like grim social realism.
It's a direct experience, rather than just a message.
COPYRIGHT©
2003 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
2003 Reviews
(alphabetical)
2003 Reviews (by star
rating)
Archive of all cinema reviews
(alphabetical)
Review Archive
Index
UK
Critic main page
|
|
![[Image]](http://www.ukcritic.com/posbanr2.gif)