Film: Vodka Lemon (PG) Hiner Saleem ii888
The Independent – United Kingdom
Sep 24, 2004
Reviewed by Robert Hanks
An Armenian-French production from the “Isn’t life a terrible thing”
school, set in a remote, snowbound Kurdish village, where the collapse
of Communism has left much of the population without jobs or money,
and the main pastimes are visiting the graves of loved ones and
drinking something called “vodka lemon”. Hamo (Romen Avinian), an
elderly widower, begins a gentle courtship of Nina (Lala Sarkissian),
a widow, whom he meets every day on the bus; but these vestiges of a
plot are crowded out by would-be bittersweet, whimsical tableaux of
local eccentricities and fortitude in the face of despair – an elderly
man is towed through the snow on his steel bed; a man on horseback
gallops through the picture every 10 minutes or so; and, at the end,
Hamo and Nina sit at her piano, playing a tune as the instrument rolls
down the road. Lovely mountain scenery, but that doesn’t make up for
the self-indulgence.