Swedish filmmaker Lukas Moodysson exploded onto the international stage with two deservedly praised features: 1998’s Show Me Love (aka Fucking Amal) was a captivating coming-of-age love story set in rural Sweden while 2000’s Together was a painfully comedic dissection of an idealistic ’70s hippie commune. Both films benefited from worthwhile performances, witty and psychologically precise writing, and direction that never called attention to itself, allowing the story to develop in surprising but organic ways.
After witnessing the Gothenburg EU summit riots in 2001, Moodysson felt compelled to write and direct a film that would express all the anger and injustice of the demonstrations without using the events themselves as a backdrop for the story. The resulting film, Lilja 4-Ever, traveled the international film festival circuit, where it was received with muted encouragement. Due to its extreme subject matter and in-your-face aesthetic—an unexpected break from the gentle aesthetic of Moodysson’s previous work—the film was never widely distributed in North America. Which is a travesty, because Lilja 4-Ever is one of the best international films of the past decade.
Lilja 4-Ever is the story of a 16-year-old girl (portrayed with fearless and ferocious dignity by Oksana Arkinshina) who is abandoned by her extended family in the new Russia of the 1990s, and quickly resorts to prostitution as her only means of survival. In what seems at first like a gift from heaven, Lilja is romanced by a charming young man who promises to help her escape her Stalinist cinderblock existence to begin a new life in Sweden. But upon arriving in her new country, Lilja is immediately betrayed and imprisoned once again into sexual slavery. The last hour of the film follows her soul-wrenching journey in the back of a Volvo as her pimp chauffeurs her in her mobile jail to an increasingly grotesque parade of wealthy, privileged johns.
Lilja 4-Ever is extremely unpleasant to watch, which is the greatest possible compliment I could bestow on a film with subject matter this uncompromising. The film exploits neither Lilja’s character nor the integrity of her story; Moodysson’s clear-eyed presentation of her plight leaves the audience shocked, saddened, and outraged. By staging many scenes from Lilja’s point of view (including the ones in which she is raped), Moodysson refuses to let the audience remain a passive participant to her debasement, and breaks through the “not my problem” mantra that many North Americans repeat when confronted with stories like Lilja’s.
We have become so conditioned by corporate culture not to feel. See for yourself what happens when a great filmmaker challenges you to do the opposite. What happens might surprise you.
Watch Lilja 4-Ever online at www.moviesfoundonline.com/lilja4ever.php
