FILM REVIEW: VODKA LEMON TASTES LIKE ALMONDS
5/19/2006 Seattlest.com – By Michael van Baker
Kurdish Media, UK
May 19 2006
Vodka Lemon by Hiner Saleem
Vodka Lemon opened its run at Central Cinema last night and Seattlest
was there because, after a forceful interior discussion, we couldn’t
recall ever having seen an Armenian film. Certainly not lately. Vodka
Lemon was shown in Seattle for the 2004 SIFF, but since we usually
stall out by the third page of the catalog, this was news to us.
mini-vodka_lemon01.jpgIn other news, before we get to the movie,
Central Cinema has a new spring menu. It’s a seasonal update; they’re
still all about those pizzas and beer. On rotating tap (picture a
possessed faucet twirling for just a second) is a summery Belgian
beer which we could have just kicked ourselves for forgetting to try.
Now the little thumbnail review: Vodka Lemon is set in an area of
Armenia that will profit greatly from the effects of global warming.
The scenery is stark, snowy, and frozen; people’s faces are chapped
and reddened by windburn; and we learn that Armenians (in this film
at least) sit around on chairs in the elements to discuss the affairs
of the day.
Director Hiner Saleem, an exiled Iraqi Kurd, places a budding romance
between two widowers in front of the evidence of wrenching decay.
(With the fall of the the USSR, Armenia was unhooked from its economic
life-support machine.) Saleem offers us allegory, but he remembers
to ground it in scenes from a rocky life.
Grizzled old Hamo has to survive on a pension of less than $10/month,
beg his sons (who have left Armenia to find work) for extra cash,
and slowly sell his most treasured possessions to cover his bus
trips to the cemetery to update his dead wife with the news that
“things are fine.” The whole village is hard up, but somehow the
movie skirts being grim — Hamo’s not-exactly-surefooted courtship
of a younger widow not only lightens the mood, it embiggens the soul.
Vodka Lemon plays a minor but essential part. Someone complains
that it tastes like almonds, not lemon. “That’s Armenia!” is the
laconic response. The movie plays through Sunday. If you go see
just one Armenian film directed by an Iraqi Kurd this year, you’d be
hard-pressed to beat this one. Let us know about the Belgian beer.