Lilya 4-Ever

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Light entertainment, this is not. Unforgettable and challenging cinema, it is.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

A haunting and incandescent work of art.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

It's almost too devastating for words, yet never less than compelling and heartbreakingly affecting.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

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.

Variety Gunnar Rehlin

Hard-hitting, dark and tragic story that rarely lets up.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Lilya's struggle to make a life for herself is both heartbreaking and heart-stirring.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

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.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

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]

LA Weekly Ernest Hardy

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.

Los Angeles Times Manohla Dargis

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.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

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.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Lukas Moodysson, a young Swedish director, crafts a stunner of a film out of familiar turf.

New York Post V.A. Musetto

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.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

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.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Forget "Irreversible," this is the season's most piercingly feel-bad movie.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Akinshina and Bogucharskij are remarkable together, and Moodysson once again demonstrates a sophisticated visual skill matched only by his innate understanding of the adolescent heart.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Terrific filmmaking, but it's hard to leave Moodysson's picture without feeling much of anything except hopelessness. Utterly.

San Francisco Chronicle Carla Meyer

Riveting.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Doesn't derive its power from the turning wheels of plot suspense but from the simple act of looking and not blinking.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

This grim Danish-Swedish production is socially revealing and artistically creative, both coldly realistic and infused with compassion for its heroine and her youth culture.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The movie, written and directed by Lukas Moodysson, has the directness and clarity of a documentary, but allows itself touches of tenderness and grief.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

What it became is essentially one long free-fall from destitution to despair.

Salon.com Charles Taylor

Not without its own bleak integrity. But the movie wipes you out and leaves you with nothing, not even the feeling of exaltation that can be present in the most tragic works of art.

Film Threat Rich Cline

Amazingly realistic and engaging drama about society punctuated with both humor and grittiness.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

a despairing movie that you can't look away from, though you'll wish you could.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

The result is grimly "effective," but it made me long for Hollywood junk.