Lilja 4-Ever

Lilja 4-Ever (2002) left me feeling disgusted with the world as it is and curious about human trafficking as a serious global human rights issue. In terms of raising awareness about an important political and social issue, director Lukas Moodysson has succeeded. His film may not be perfect, but it rouses the emotions he intends, the emotions I believe are necessary if we are going to muster the political will to solve this problem.

The film follows a 16-year old Estonian girl, Lilja (Oksana Akinshina) who is abandoned by her mother, aunt, and school friends. She is forced to move to a wretched slum furnished with the meager possessions of a recently deceased old army vet. Only her young friend Volodya (a brilliant Artyom Bogucharsky) also an abandoned child, keeps her company and provides her with the warmth of human contact.

Even before prostitution and sexual slavery are introduced, Lilja 4-Ever is quite disturbing. Abandoned children living in poverty is a gritty subject unto itself. The interactions between Volodya and Lilja are heartbreaking, for in their natural rapport, we recognize their good nature, desperation, and the innocence that will be despoiled. The naturalistic style of the film (little makeup, natural lighting, handheld DV) lend the film a realism that makes the cruelty depicted all that much more unsettling.

Lilja, isolated, impoverished, and simultaneously too prideful and self-loathing to actively pursue social services, begins to turn tricks, showing up at dance clubs where middle-aged men proposition her. Though she wears a numb, disengaged countenance during sex, the cash influx ignites her with a newfound joy. She can pay her bills and buy groceries! When Lilja triumphantly cruises the local food mart, Moodysson reveals the complexity of Lilja's lifestyle, as her joy is genuine but only made possible through acts of degradation.

When a handsome young man befriends Lilja and promises her a a legitimate job in Sweden, Lilja's spirits increase, but so do our suspicions about the mysterious stranger. Having left her only true friend, Volodya (thus the abandoned becomes the abandoner) Lilja arrives in Sweden with a phony passport and immediately finds herself imprisoned in an oppressive apartment where she "works" or rather, is raped repeatedly as a sex slave while her sadistic pimp earns a pretty profit.

At first this scenario seemed excessive and melodramatic to me. Do pimps and thugs really bring women over from economically depressed countries with promises of good jobs? Do the teenage girls really fall for these promises? Are they really imprisoned and threatened with violence? The answer to all of these questions, my research told me, is yes. The threats against the women aren't idle, asylum is not available in most countries, and if the women choose to go to the authorities, they face deportation.

Lilja 4-Ever is largely realistic or at least approximates reality in its depiction of sex slavery, but is it emotionally realistic? At times it is- for instance, during the scenes with Volodya and Lilja conversing in their flat. The harshness and cruelty of Lilja's mother and her boyfriend are rendered with both great economy and truth. But Lilja herself remains an enigma. Numbness is a difficult trait to portray through film, and that is Lilja's predominating characteristic. What is she thinking? What is she feeling? Maybe emotionlessness is Lilja's only way to survive, but that is also sort of a cop-out when it comes to depicting an abused character. The abuse largely speaks for itself, but the imprint it makes on Lilja should be felt more viscerally by the audience.

Simply put, I wanted to feel more empathy for Lilja, but she is difficult to connect with. This has nothing to do with Akinshina, who is quite good, and everything to do with the situations Moodysson puts her in. Her isolation throughout the film make it difficult to know about her as a person, practically speaking. Scenes featuring Volodya and Lilja with angel wings attempt to serve a heartbreaking dose of magical realism but fail to offer new information or insight into the characters and come across as mostly empty stylistic gestures. Moodysson is at his best with gritty, no-frills, naturalism.

Lilja 4-Ever is disturbing, but I wanted to be pummeled, totally eviscerated, my guts hanging out. As I stated earlier, Lilja 4-Ever inspires a potent amount of disgust and outrage necessary for future research and interest in the subject, but it does not reach the tragic proportions a story such as this should.