Abstract
In a region that is traditionally considered to be transnational, Nordic cinema has often posed as the prime case for a transnational cinema. The paper contests this notion of Nordic transnationality by analysing two films that depict two Russian women travelling to Sweden. Interdevochka/Intergirl (Todorovski, 1989, USSR) and Lilya-4-ever (Moodysson, 2004, Sweden) challenge the inclusiveness of the region and make explicit the fact that Russian identities are not part of the homogenous mixture of the region. Instead, Russian identities of cross-border prostitution are cinematically subjected to rejection and victimisation. This paper examines how Lilya-4-ever adheres to a European anxiety narrative by performing a Russian return narrative and how Interdevochka/Intergirl portrays ‘the fallen soviet woman’ by travelling to Sweden. These cinematic representations of the female Russian identity travelling to Sweden differ from each national context, but by probing into a comparative analysis the paper will reveal that both films need the Other to narrate these stories of transnational labour migration.
Highlights
When Margareta Winberg, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Gender Equality in Sweden, took up the film Lilya 4-ever (2002) for public debate in 2003, she made it clear that the film’s most important function in her view was its depiction of gender equality
By demonstrating how Lilya 4-ever performs a Russian ‘return’ narrative, in this article I want to underline the ways in which the story of Lilya adheres to a European ‘anxiety’
My major concern with Lilya 4-ever is not its horrific portrayal of human trafficking, which the film depicts with genuine credibility, but with its end flight into a ‘return narrative’ for its female protagonist, a salient Russian, and in particular Soviet, convention in cinematic representations of Russians abroad
Summary
Despite the different contexts of the two films, the structure of the two narratives is constructed in accordance with the same formula. While I agree with Sarsenov that Tanya ends her life journey on the Swedish road to the airport, in my opinion Tanya’s act is less a sacrifice than a last resort Sensing that her mother has died, Tanya believes she has no one left in Russia to care for and no reason to return. The score’s montage of Rammstein and Vivaldi, the Germanic bleeding heart versus the Italian light-romantic,[26] signifies the leap from realism to the meta-real That this is a pivotal moment in the film is supported by Wilson’s reading: ‘The film cuts to Lilya in the ambulance, taking us beyond the point reached at its opening to Lilya’s general circulatory arrest’ (2005, 336). This continues to underline the Russian female identity abroad as Other in the European space, whether that identity is told by a Swede or a Soviet Russian
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