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.

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

Definitely not a film for everyone. But even in spite of the horrible poverty and other realities of "living" in Armenia I would recommend it. The lead actor and actress plays their roles admirably as do most of the more minor characters. I especially recommend this film for its displays of Armenian culture and tradition. These scenes were all touching, funny, and hopeful. The ending is a little too surrealistic for me and this unexpected conclusion certainly does not help me in recommending this film. However, all things considered, I would still recommend this film to all who would like a meaningful view of real developing world poverty, tradition, and humor.

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.

Problems? You think you have problems? I'll tell you who has problems. People in Armenia have lots and lots of problems. In fact, their main activities seem to be centered around visiting a cemetery in the middle of a snowy, unforgiving landscape, which eventually will thaw only to bring on horrendous mud. There isn't much life here. Some people live with memories of when there was a Soviet Union and things were actually better. Now, they have tiny pensions and hope that their surviving family members who got away can at least send back some money. If no money comes back, people just starve. That is pretty much all that goes on in this movie. As long as you know in advance that it is about desperate people in an Arctic wasteland, and you don't expect much more, you'll like it! I actually liked this movie. I was having a bad week. My refrigerator died, then my front tooth fell out. I still have it a lot better than these Armenians do. For that reason, I feel happy and grateful, if not a bit shellshocked by the stupefying lack of plot, action and dialogue in this movie. Don't get me wrong. There are some very funny scenes in this movie. If you like Jewish or Slavic humor, for example, and you wonder why it is always so black and so bleak, you might want to see this as a kind of modern view about a place where nothing changes, ever. Things are bad, and they stay bad. And then a horseman goes galloping by. In the middle of nowhere. And we can have a cigarette and a shot of vodka, until we run out of cigarettes and the vodka concession closes. Enjoy.