Ëèëÿ íàâñåãäà - White trafficking, Russian mafia, downfall of the Eastern Bloc, poverty, western cultural invasion, excruciating, puking... all these words exploded from my head when I was reading the blurb on the poster. But my tongue was tied, speechless.
It's a universal cruelty that the rich take it all. If Russia were a rich country, would their women be forced to go around the world to sell their bodies for bread? Would they be deceived so easily when people tell them there is a better life waiting for them in another land? Lukas Moodysson is very honest to expose the sheer tragedy of how poverty pushes a young life to the River Styx. Fortunately, the appearance of the guardian angel Volodya somehow mercifully simmers the glaciated senses.
I guess I have lived in comfort for too long, and so unconsciously silly, I picked this movie on the second day of the Chinese New Year and also the second day of my birthday. Tears were oozing out from my heart why I saw Lilja being devastated in Sweden. A holiday of pain I had.
Watching the film, I suddenly remember a tragedy. In 1994, a New Zealander lawyer, Gary Alderdice, who was a well-known socialite and Queen's Counsel in the former British Hong Kong, was found brutally killed in Vladivostok, Russia with a 20-year-old Russian prostitute, Natalya Samofalova whom he got to know in the former Portuguese enclave Macau. The power of the underworld in these countries is so big that people cannot imagine.
When tyrants are gone, is it for sure that people will have a better life? Alexander Kerner (Good bye, Lenin!), you are a rare lucky star.
It's a universal cruelty that the rich take it all. If Russia were a rich country, would their women be forced to go around the world to sell their bodies for bread? Would they be deceived so easily when people tell them there is a better life waiting for them in another land? Lukas Moodysson is very honest to expose the sheer tragedy of how poverty pushes a young life to the River Styx. Fortunately, the appearance of the guardian angel Volodya somehow mercifully simmers the glaciated senses.
I guess I have lived in comfort for too long, and so unconsciously silly, I picked this movie on the second day of the Chinese New Year and also the second day of my birthday. Tears were oozing out from my heart why I saw Lilja being devastated in Sweden. A holiday of pain I had.
Watching the film, I suddenly remember a tragedy. In 1994, a New Zealander lawyer, Gary Alderdice, who was a well-known socialite and Queen's Counsel in the former British Hong Kong, was found brutally killed in Vladivostok, Russia with a 20-year-old Russian prostitute, Natalya Samofalova whom he got to know in the former Portuguese enclave Macau. The power of the underworld in these countries is so big that people cannot imagine.
When tyrants are gone, is it for sure that people will have a better life? Alexander Kerner (Good bye, Lenin!), you are a rare lucky star.