VODKA LEMON
DVDTimes.co.uk, UK
Sept 7 2005
Vodka Lemon takes place in a Kurdish village in Armenia. It’s the dead
of winter, with temperatures twenty below zero and more. Hamo (Romen
Avinien) is a widower in his sixties, who visits his wife’s grave
and talks to her there. While there he meets Nina (Lala Sarkissian),
a widow with a daughter, and finds himself drawn to her.
It’s fair to say that examples of Armenian cinema are not thick on the
ground. In what reaches British release at least, it’s represented
almost entirely by the Canadian-based Atom Egoyan, who in films
such as Ararat has dealt with his Armenian heritage. Vodka Lemon
is very different. Hineer Saleem is an Iraqi Kurd based in Paris,
and as he makes clear in the documentary that accompanies his film,
Vodka Lemon is as much a Kurdish story. The situation in Iraq made
filming there impossible, so the story was written about the large
Kurdish population in Armenia. In terms of inspiration, this is
a world away from Egoyan’s frequently rather cerebral cinema.
Instead, Saleem aims north, aspiring to the low-key, deadpan
miserablist humour of Finnish director Aki Kaurasmaki. The result
is certainly a warm-hearted film, but to me it doesn’t equal its
inspiration. It shares its leisurely pace and poker-faced comedy with
Kaurismaki’s work, but the danger of working in a minor key is that of
slightness and inconsequentiality. And that’s where Vodka Lemon falls
down. There are certainly consolations, such as the performances and
the occasional shaft of humour. Christophe Pollock’s cinematography
makes the obviously bitterly cold settings strangely beautiful. And
the sheer novelty of seeing a film from this part of the world makes
this worth a look. The title, by the way, comes from an exchange that
Nina has with a customer at her roadside liquor store. When asked why
a drink is called vodka lemon when it tastes of almonds, she says:
“That’s Armenia!”