Lemon

The good: everything is off in this story. It's off on purpose though. The characters, especially one, is quite certain a total weirdo, but the whole story oozes weirdness. Not laugh out loud funny weird, but more of a smirky, quirky kinda weird humor.

More good: what made it also interesting for me to watch, were the terrific (weird) soundtrack and the photography. Both were excellent. The acting is great as well.

The bad: weird characters in weird stories can be interesting, but I always need to feel that the main character is humanlike. That isnt the case though, making it harder for me to sympathize with the leading character, who is a total f90k up and a incredibly blunt and unsympathetic weird guy.

The story: an insecure, middle aged f80k up is desperately trying to be succesful in acting and directing. He is terrible at both though. He is a terrible person as well. Just totally unsympathetic. Wanna watch 1 hour and 15 minutes of a weird obnoxious dude?

Recommended only for those arthouse movie fans, who like weird...

This film tells the story of a socially awkward man, whose girlfriend of ten years left him suddenly. He tries to live his life as normal, but his life is anything but normal.

Honestly, the first ten minutes of the film is already horrible. The protagonist is such an socially awkward man, and he just does not know how to be around people. The film itself is super awkward as well, as there are dialogs such as a man saying "I need you", then the woman replies "my sister is double parking". This type of illogical conversation happens constantly in the film. The dialogs are so ridiculous and logically unconnected, that the plot just makes no sense. I do not find the film funny, engaging or sympathetic at all. It is a waste of my time, and my poorly informed decision to have watched this film.

This is a great dramedy, in the sense that it actually is very funny and has some emotional moments too. I love the main actor (his work in Fleabag is great, but he's fully on display here). The concept of the film is a little dark, but really gets to the emotional core of being rejected. Love the supporting cast as well - def a recommend for this little-seen gem.

This was the opening film of the Rotterdam film festival 2017 (iffr.com), and as such may give rise to expectations of something remarkable or otherwise special. Alas, I cannot think of many positive remarks about this film. Several people around me had a lot of laughs throughout the running time, but I had mostly trouble to produce even a tiny smile. Maybe I'm embarrassed seeing a definite loser on a definitely downhill path, where everything he does fails on him. And it would certainly have helped when Isaac had only been just a tiny bit of sympathetic. Now it is all just sad, nothing humorous about it. I know that many people delight (schadenfreude) in the suffering of others, but I'm not one of those. (Counter example: I love all the Ulrich Seidl movies, where you also find yourself embarrassed while watching, wondering whether you can stand it much longer. Nevertheless, I always endure to the end and even watch these movies more than once. Best example: his Paradise trilogy, especially Paradise: Love.) Anyway, apart from me the audience was not happy with this movie either, as it ranked a lowly 158th (out of 172) place for the audience award.

There were some links between Isaac's life at home and the acting classes (like the "I I I" that offended his girlfriend in an early scene). Are these classes an artificial construct, introduced by the film makers, in order to make a point?? (If yes, I missed it.) Or is it just a means to humiliate others or to showcase his own shortcomings?? (Partly, see next paragraph.)

The final Q&A clarified several things. For example: this movie resembles the lives of the film makers, feeling out of place (black, Jewish, etc), and it resembles their personalities too. There was a question about music and composer, but the answer escaped me. There was a very valid question about acting classes, coming down to: are they really that way?? The answer was that teachers are very abusive and impulsive as a rule. They can quit class and run out, or behave otherwise very crazy. There was a question about the family reunion, whether it was for real?? The answer was that a comedy can make sweet what is shown on screen. It is something not happening to you, so you can feel good in spite of it, like feeling less lonely. Lastly, the Q&A clarified the title of the film: Lemon stands for a lame person or thing, or something useless or crappy. As the film makers explained, that meaning of the word is obvious to all native English speakers.

Finally, a positive remark, in spite of everything: in the closing scene where Isaac's car is taken away to a garage or more probably a scrap yard (Isaac: "it just died on me"), we see the final credits roll by. For that reason these credits seemed not overly long, unlike the feeling I have with other movies. I've the impression that credits become longer every day, exhaustively mentioning even the smallest contribution in full (catering, chauffeur, and so on). It can be that this all is necessary in the context of financing the project, but it borders on annoying and only forces you to grab a flashlight and leave the venue before the lights get on.

It's difficult to rate this movie as for me I'd give an 8 as I was really amused throughout. A score for a wider audience would be much lower as it's quite a divisive film. I think the film is trying to make fun of the pretentiousness and self- absorbed nature of the characters, and one of the ways is by filming in an arch, avante garde manner. The style reminded me a lot of Yorgos Lanthimos in the way characters dispassionately speak past each other and the rather surreal nature of a lot of scenes. Most of the characters aren't particularly likable or relatable but that's good in my opinion. Why should a character in a movie be relatable to my life?, and it's the bad or unlikable characters that are the most interesting in a film. That's not to say the characters are bad, just rather solipsistic.