Director: Lukas Moodysson
Year Released: 2002
Rating: 1.0
Close in feel to that other portrait of an abandoned girl, Blue Car (not to mention its brother in misery, Ken Loach's Sweet Sixteen), this is another film about the indignities suffered by a 16-year-old after her family abandons her. Details every ounce of suffering and dreariness as innumerable people abuse her - even a promising would-be lover with a job prospect is involved in the sex-trade industry. Masochists might have a field day with the bleeding and foul temperament, but these nihilistic movies - without a shred of insight or imagination - only manage to irritate me more and more as I've gotten older (there is an effectively creepy montage where we get to see, in first person perspective, what a female has to look at when in the missionary position - all I can say is, sorry girls). In a rather unwanted bit of inspiration, Moodysson borrows from Harmony Korine and dresses up his two protagonists - Lilja and her little friend - as angels with obviously fake wings (he did include Gummo in his 2002 Sight and Sound ballot, after all).
