Karry
Best movie of this year hands down!
MoPoshy
Absolutely brilliant
Merolliv
I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.
Morten_5
When "Lilya 4-ever" premiered in Sweden 15 years ago, it shattered many hearts and gave fire to a debate on human trafficking that would last for years. I finally watched Moodysson's amazing film and it broke my heart too.Twitter: @7thArtShortRevs (Mårten Larsson).
ivusal-84083
From the beginning to the end, the film which blows drama wind that is more tough during the end, glamorously beautiful, the film which has a soundtrack ("Mein Hertz Brennt"), in my opinion, completed absolutely to the movie, especially to the last scene and the most important, the film which is not the mainstream movie like recommended by a "friend"
tapio_hietamaki
This movie suggests that life is dreary, boring and depressing in the general area of ex-USSR countries, and in the winter things go from bad to worse. The people are mean, poor drunkards, the scenery consists of gray concrete blocks and there is nothing to do but smell glue. Well, I'm from Finland, and I've visited Estonia, Ukraine and Russia and I have to say that the movie does its portrayal jokingly and lovingly. Obviously there are all kinds of depressing situations all over the world and I don't see that the movie is singling out this area. What it is saying is that these hellish circumstances are reality for some, that there exists darkness and filth in the world, and it is easy to forget, or ignore, living in a first-world apartment complex. It also shows how thin the line between 'first-world' and 'ghetto' can be.It's a tragic story of a girl, an individual, but into her story there is loaded a lot of social commentary. It is difficult to discuss the movie without delving into its agenda, its subject, its political themes. It's a movie about human trafficking, a touchy subject and a touching one, but where Liam Neeson's 'Taken' uses that backdrop to show us a fast-paced action thriller, Lukas Moodysson's 'Lilja 4-Ever' knows how difficult saving people truly is and how deep-rooted the issues here are.
minnich
Lilya 4-ever in one sense is another run-through of a theme that we've seen in many other films of the last 20 years or so: the enticement by scumbags of naive young girls into involuntary prostitution (what once upon a time was called "white slavery"). Lilya is a classic victim: young, abandoned by her family, barely scraping by in a VERY run-down Soviet-era apartment block in a nameless city in post-USSR Russia. A "nice guy" dates her, treats her with seeming respect, and the next thing she knows, she's on her way to Sweden (where her "boyfriend" will join her "shortly", of course...) for the "good job" he's found for her. I'm sure you know what happens next. The acting by both the young Russian actress who plays Lilya and the even-younger boy who plays Volodnya (her only real friend) is absolutely outstanding. (NOTE: If you're expecting nudity by this actress, you'll be sorely disappointed. There are NO nude scenes at all by her, although earlier, in a Russian night club, you see a couple topless go-go dancers with pasties over their nipples. This film packs its wallop WITHOUT any explicit sex scenes.)
