Not as good as people claim it is
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Lilya 4-Ever
saikano_75 — 10 years ago(February 25, 2016 07:41 PM)
Over on the Human Trafficking page of this site, people kept saying that this movie was better and that people should watch this instead of Human Trafficking.
So apparently it can be watched on Youtube and it did nothing for me. They are trying to pull off this girl whose life was doomed from the start with just a series of all these bad things happening to her and the only silver lining is her friend who she at times gets mad at but at the end they are still friends.
Yeah no. I can't really sympathize with her mostly because she really shows no emotion throughout the movie besides anger over dumb beep
Oh the teacher made a joke about you having a bright future and you storm out while telling her to go to hell? You can't afford cigs and call the cashier a bitch? You get gang raped and you don't care because you are going to be whisked away to Sweden by your new boyfriend?
Okay.
No. And I couldn't get over how fake and over the top those wings looked. I kind of wish it was more graphic but even so I still would not feel sorry for the girl. It's not like she was optimistic and looking forward to a bright future. She wasn't even trying to to make something happen for herself. It kind of annoyed me she wanted to be a bitch to the cashier. At least she has a job!
This just didn't work for me. -
BuckMelanoma — 10 years ago(March 28, 2016 07:48 PM)
Yeah I'm sure the girl who had a mother and home one day and then none of those things the next, should only be thinking positive and going out there to get a job. You clearly missed the whole point, and misinterpreted the emotions she was clearly feeling: confusion, sadness, disgust, hope, terror, etc. she was 16 years old. At 16 I wouldn't have been able to figure out how to live alone in 1 day. Maybe give it another viewing
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saikano_75 — 9 years ago(April 21, 2016 05:03 PM)
I remember it enough to know that her aunt took her to a crappy place but it was still a roof over her head. she was not homeless. Maybe you should give my topic another viewing because I never said she had to figure it all out in one day.
I thought the point of it was to show the world of human trafficking which they failed to deliver on. -
ginger-51 — 9 years ago(June 18, 2016 07:01 PM)
In terms of human trafficking, I felt it was pretty mild. I work with teensmany of whom have been trafficked in the past, tragicallyand I'm sad to say that Lilya's life after being trafficked was actually still pretty decent compared to what many of these victims experience. She had an apartment (even if she was locked in) and was fed after just ONE trick. She had her own clothing. The men who purchased her didn't abuse her too badly aside from the obvious unwanted sex/rapes. In truth Lilya would have been beaten daily (not just once) by her trafficker, drugged every day to make her more compliant, and only fed often enough to keep her aliveusually after she had "serviced" 20+ men per night. Oh, and the men who bought her would probably have been abusing her severely too. Broken bones, burns, severe cuts, that sort of thing. Men who buy underage prostitutes from traffickers are NOT nice guys who just want someone to hold their hand while they make love. And many of the young women and boys I've heard speak of this tell of being locked in the back of a big rig truck, driven around from town to town and being sold along the waynot locked in a quiet, secure high rise apartment with flush toilets and a bathtub and a kitchen and furniture. Not that some victims DON'T experience that kind of thing too, but it's much more frequent for the victims to be treated like an animaluntil the police find them, and treat them like a criminal, putting them in jail for prostitution while their pimps and johns walk free.
Having said all thatI did feel that they did a great job in this film of portraying the kind of desperation that would lead a teen to be vulnerable to traffickers. In a training I attended a couple weeks ago, they told us that traffickers and pimps tend to target girls and boys who are hungry, homeless, desperate, or who do not feel there is anyone who cares about their wellbeing. I feel they painted that picture REALLY well. Lilya was almost completely alone in the world, and the few people who still spoke to her were not the kind of people who would do anything to protect her. Except the boy she was friends withand he had problems of his own, obviously.
This movie made me sad. But I've heard WAY worse stories in real life, tragically.