neumu [ cinematronic ]




	Lilya 4-Ever
	Lukas Moodysson Oksana Akinshina, Artiom Bogucharskij, Elina Beninson, Lilia Shinkareva, Pavel Ponomaryov, Tomas Neumann 2002		Writer/director Lukas Moodysson's "Together" — a wise, witty, mostly unsentimental look at the implosion of an urban commune in mid-'70s Sweden — doesn't begin to hint at the shocking experience of his follow-up film, the powerful, woeful tragedy "Lilya 4-Ever." Although "Lilya 4-Ever" merits praise and viewing, it's a very rough ride. To start, Moodysson's chosen arena is a forlorn housing project in the former Soviet Union, where his lead character, a pretty teenager named Lilya, is about to have her world ripped apart. Lilya's mother heads off to live in the United States with her new husband, a naturalized American. She promises to send Lilya money and a plane ticket to New York, leaving the girl to dream of an opulent new life across the sea. But Lilya, with her hateful, greedy aunt as designated guardian, is really being abandoned in the dead of winter. Seeking deliverance, Lilya scrambles to survive until she meets a man who might be her ticket out of poverty and squalor. Bona fide performances by Oksana Akinshina as Lilya and Artiom Bogucharskij as a scruffy, younger boy who idolizes her are the sorrowful heart of the film, which plows forward to the beat of a harsh industrial-rock soundtrack.