Running time: 109 minutes
Starring: Oksana Akinshina, Artyom Bogucharsky, Lyobov Agapova, Liliya Shinkaryova, Pavel Ponomaryov, Elina Beneshon
Rating 7 out of 10
Fans of Lukas Moodyson's pervious work Together might be expecting another quirky social comedy along the lines of last year's arthouse smash. His latest film leaves behind the satire and often farcical world he created last time and instead concentrates on the harsh subjects of urban decay, lack of hope amongst Europe's poorest teenagers and the depressing world of the sex industry. Set in an undisclosed former Soviet city, the film focusses on Lilya (Oksana Akinshina), a young girl whose mother decides to leave to go to the United States and forget her daughter at home. Despite the fact that they are living in a mediocre council flat, Lilya's aunt soon arrives to claim it for her own, dispatching the teenager to live in a damp and filthy room she has found. Lilya spends her days rebelling: at school, against her friends but mostly against society.
Spending a couple of hours in the forgotten and monolithic council estates that Moodyson found to shoot is bad enough. Living there must be soul-destroying. Yet most of the people who will actually see this film will probably be unaware that millions of people live like this every day. Now that any chance, however unlikely, of improvement has gone since the collapse of communism, they live lives without hope and the young will inevitably have two choices: escape or self-destruction.
Lilya is a typical example. A dreamer, her hopes of joining her mother are soon squashed. Her only friend is the homeless Volodya (Artyom Bogucharsky), a couple of years younger and intent on proving he is older by confessing his desire to sleep with her. Together they follow a monotonous path of glue sniffing and seeking similarly squalid highs. When Lilya begins to run out of the little money she has, her friend Natasha (Elina Beneshon) suggests joining her to prostitute herself in a club in town. At first Lilya balks at the idea, but when she hits rock bottom it appears she has little option.
In the club one night she meets the charming Andrei (Pavel Ponomaryov). He offers her a lift home and soon he is offering her the world: they will move to Sweden together to start a new life. Lilya is delighted, but when the day comes Andrei has some 'problems' with his grandmother. Lilya flies to Malmo alone to begin what she hopes will be a new life: it is indeed a new life but far from the one she was expecting.
Moodyson conveys the despairing social situation for what it is: harsh, unredeeming and without hope. In Oksana Akinshina he finds the perfect vessel to convey it, mixing the cocky yet vulnerable characters of so many teenagers. Too young or too naïve to believe that the trip to Sweden will go wrong, she boards the plane with all the excitement of taking a first flight. She is the heart of the film.
From the opening scene it is evident that there will be no happy ending. Moodyson perhaps lets the finale linger too long, and the character of Volodya perhaps slows the film down from time to time. The climax is a kind of subversive It's a Wonderful Life, but thousands of miles from Hollywood happiness there is going to be no happy Christmas for Lilya.
