Vodka Lemon

This is at best a distant cousin to the Eastern European Life Really Sucks genre.

The story of the slow dissolution of a society, where the young move out and the old quietly die (often before the grave) plays out so frequently in Western art houses and film festivals. Is it a matter of exporting things you already have a surplus of?

Anyway, nothing much happens. The few instances of "magic" aren't supported by the overall structure and theme. This is a snapshot of a dying town, somewhere out on the suburban steppes, just waiting to fade slowly into the white background of the near-eternal northern winter.

Other comments have detailed some of the plot elements of this beautiful film, but haven't really mentioned the perfect visual balances throughout this film that also help keep it from sliding into depression or wallowing or sentimentality. For example, as the main character hauls his possessions to sell at the market one by one, the visual incongruity of the huge items he's hauling on his own down a stretch of endless highway is so quirky and absurd that the subtle smart humor offsets any chance we'd let pity sully the scene.

There are scenes in this film so gorgeous that I think of them with crystal clarity, even months later.

Don't miss this film if you have the chance to see it.

Vodka Lemon is such a great movie by a Kurdish director living in France. The film is full of surrealism (like the horse galloping in the streets and the ending in which the piano moves by itself)and comedy! The beautiful snow covered landscape is extraordinary, the scenes during the nights are best in terms of cinematography. I think this film is Hiner Saleem's best film, after moderately nice "Long Live the Bride...Liberation of Kurdistan", in particular. It shows how Kurdish people living in Armenia influenced by the Russian and Armenian cultures, like drinking vodka-lemon all day, even at the cemetery, while mourning for the dead wife. The story is well organized and weaved, sub-plots works well (like the piano player girl, Zine, and the Avin's marriage with the weird Kurdish man). Vodka Lemon's representation of Kurdish life and culture in Armenia is proper and great I think, Saleem is opening a window that reflects the life of Kurds in Diasporas. He did it before in his first feature "Long Live the Bride..)

devrim kilic

editor in chief www.kurdishcinema.org www.kurdishcinema.com

This is a good film -- dark, and funny, and absurd. The setting is post-Soviet Armenia, today. Life is bleak in the Caucasus; the young have either emigrated or, if they have stayed, they've either turned cruel and abusive or are exploited through prostitution or tawdry sexual encounters. Most of the people in village are pensioners, however. Everyone is forced to sell their meager belongings just to get by. Life is tedious -- unemployed men gather in small groups to drink Vodka Lemon and discuss their effete prospects. A widow and widower, strangers, meet during their regular visits to the graves of their deceased partners. A bit of human warm and humor is thus established. But what gives this film its true strength of statement, and sets is tone, are the absurd moments -- it opens with a musician sleigh-riding on his sick-bed; it ends with a piano gliding off down the road into the distance; a man on horseback gallops across the screen at odd moments and for no known purpose. There is no rhyme or reason for the poverty experienced by these characters -- its effects are pointless, random, and unpredictable and absurd.

The reality of the most miserable places of Armenia. Beautiful landscapes whose beauty is just comparable to the poverty of the people that lives there. The dismantling of the Sovietic Union left too many people to fate.

"Vodka Lemon" is basically a contemplative movie, it's so poetic and the photography is just awesome. Maybe the development of some of the characters is rather random, and those who like to see some action will probably dislike "Vodka". Some may think that in "VL" does not happen anything... but that's not true. It's just that the things that happen in this movie are so small, the people that the story is about are so insignificant... but hey, that's life.

*My rate: 7/10