All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Average User Score: 9 (8 sources)

Submit Movie Review

Review this film

Tell the world what you think of Lilya 4-Ever

Your Score:

reset score

Write Your Review:
When writing your review, remember to keep the language clean.

Submit Review Cancel

NoOneIsAlone

-1

Agree (1)

Disagree (0)

Good film, great story. Though the actors and the directors are not well known among the public, I think that this movie certainly was one of the good movies that certainly have an impact on us, the ones that watch the films. I think this film was...
[+] Read Full Review

Good film, great story. Though the actors and the directors are not well known among the public, I think that this movie certainly was one of the good movies that certainly have an impact on us, the ones that watch the films. I think this film was very original and it was something that I am not used to watch, and that is why I liked this film so much.

[-] Minimize Review

Report Abuse

Posted feb 27, 2007 10:52 am pt

dju010

-1

Agree (0)

Disagree (0)

I really like this movie. It's hard, it's cruel, but it is absolutely realistic!
The film starts in some Russian province in some Soviet housing suburb. In the houses only the poorest people live as does the family of Lilya.
So when...
[+] Read Full Review

I really like this movie. It's hard, it's cruel, but it is absolutely realistic!
The film starts in some Russian province in some Soviet housing suburb. In the houses only the poorest people live as does the family of Lilya.
So when her mother leaves to search for a better future in the United States, Lilya is alone. After the shock the parties start and the worries for money. What does a minor girl do to survive without any money in a city with no work? Soon prostitution is the only solution and with it money the party goes on - along with the drugs.
Then she runs into her new boyfriend - she's the poor kind, so the super cool, sweet guy. She falls in love right away and soon trusts him completely. Together they live for one dream: a better live in the European Union.
He promises her a job along with a better live in Sweden and she is so happy about that.
She hopes to leave her hell behind her, but she lands in something worse than she ever imagined. She lands in the real hell. This time she is forced to prostitution and is beaten up whenever she doesn't listen to her new pimp.

The story is the same we read about every day or all few days in the newspaper. The stories of all these girls forced to prostitution in Western Europe.
The film is so good, because it is so realistic. The film shows us a story that could be absolutely realistic - a story that could happen or even happens every single day. The film doesn't have a happy end or anything. It is cruel from the first moment till the very last. The film doesn't care about anything, it just wants to show the truth. And it succeeds completely.
Lukas Moodysson the writer and director doesn't speak a word of Russian, the main actress only speaks Russian. They barely used a translator, they just used signs or didn't communicate at all. The result of everything is even more amazing.
The soundtrack to the film is perfect as well. The film uses some Russian techno and some German hard-rock - t.A.T.u. and Rammstein. Rammstein song "Mein Herz brennt" - translated "my heart is burning", while the desperate Lilya just runs away, desperate, given up all hope - and then jumps of the bridge.
All used songs are or were very poplar or successful in Russia - something that makes this film even more "real".

In the end of the movie, you just can't let go anymore. When I watch the movie, I sit there for some minutes and can't move anymore. You even could cry. The movie is so cruel, but everything is so realistic, so you just feel sick. The story and our real world start to disgust you. It's hard to let go.

[-] Minimize Review

Report Abuse

Posted jan 5, 2007 12:50 am pt

• [+] ReelViews
  
  100
  Light entertainment, this is not. Unforgettable and challenging cinema, it is.

  by James Berardinelli | Read Full Review »
• [+] Entertainment Weekly
  
  100
  A haunting and incandescent work of art.

  by Owen Gleiberman | Read Full Review »
• [+] Seattle Post-Intelligencer
  
  91
  It's almost too devastating for words, yet never less than compelling and heartbreakingly affecting.

  by Sean Axmaker | Read Full Review »
• [+] The New York Times
  
  90
  The most remarkable achievement of the film is its presentation of Lilya's story as both an archetypal case study and a personal drama whose spunky central character you come to care about so deeply that you want to cry out a warning at each step toward her ruination.

  by Stephen Holden | Read Full Review »
• [+] Variety
  
  90
  Hard-hitting, dark and tragic story that rarely lets up.

  by Gunnar Rehlin | Read Full Review »
• [+] Washington Post
  
  90
  Lilya's struggle to make a life for herself is both heartbreaking and heart-stirring.

  by Desson Thomson | Read Full Review »
• [+] The New Republic
  
  90
  It is Akinshina's presence and performance that make the pedestrian story heart-wrenching. She is pretty, responsive, reflective. Without the slightest strain, she convinces us of the beauty and pathos and hope within Lilya.

  by Stanley Kauffmann | Read Full Review »
• [+] The New Yorker
  
  90
  As with "Together," Moodysson has pulled off a staggering dramatic coup, and again we are forced to ask: How does he do it? [21 & 28 April 2003, p.194]

  by Anthony Lane | Read Full Review »
• [+] LA Weekly
  
  90
  Lilya is the more genuinely unsettling film because Moodysson seems to actually know something of what it is to take and stumble beneath a crushing blow. You feel that here. And you feel it for days after.

  by Ernest Hardy | Read Full Review »
• [+] Los Angeles Times
  
  90
  I can't think of another good movie this year that's as tough to watch as Moodysson's, but, then, I can't think of very many movies that are as good.

  by Manohla Dargis | Read Full Review »
• [+] Charlotte Observer
  
  88
  If you're tired of false holiday cheer, Lilya 4-Ever will provide a corrective to the spiritual eggnog force-fed to us all season. The climax takes place during Christmas, though one that would make Tiny Tim grateful for his crutch and cold chimney corner.

  by Lawrence Toppman | Read Full Review »
• [+] Rolling Stone
  
  88
  Lukas Moodysson, a young Swedish director, crafts a stunner of a film out of familiar turf.

  by Peter Travers | Read Full Review »
• [+] New York Post
  
  88
  Lilya is portrayed by Oksana Akinshina, who gives a dynamic, heartbreaking performance... She was wonderful in ["Brothers"], but is even more astonishing in Lilya 4-Ever.

  by V.A. Musetto | Read Full Review »
• [+] Chicago Tribune
  
  88
  What's remarkable as we watch Lilya's plunge (and the brief, false rays of light that illuminate it) is how real Moodysson makes her plight, how intensely he makes us empathize with Lilya.

  by Michael Wilmington | Read Full Review »
• [+] Village Voice
  
  80
  Forget "Irreversible," this is the season's most piercingly feel-bad movie.

  by J. Hoberman | Read Full Review »