In the heart-stabbing, weirdly lyrical gem “Vodka Lemon,” we meet an unforgettable old widower named Hamo (Romen Avinian). Resident of an isolated, snowy Armenian Kurdish village, Hamo lives a bleak life, talking regularly to his wife at her gravestone and waiting in vain for financial help from his three sons, one of whom lives in France.
Gradually, the lonely old man begins to woo a middle-aged widow, Nina (Lala Sarkissian), whom he sees on the local bus. It’s a sad but charming little courtship. Traveling to her job at a failing Vodka Lemon liquor stand, Nina can never afford her fare and Hamo starts to help her. But he’s in dire straits too, selling off his last possessions–a TV set, a precious armoire–one by one.
What will happen to them? “Vodka Lemon” is a beautiful and funny film about a sad subject: the slow disintegration of Hamo’s life and of his village after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It’s been written and directed by the man who is the finest living Iraqi filmmaker, though he’s been exiled from his country for two decades: Hiner Saleem.
Saleem, an Iraqi Kurd, is an expatriate living in Paris, and he shoots in a classic French expatriate style, full of tableaus, slow rhythms, understated melancholy and irony. Saleem’s essential humanism shines through his dark humor, climaxing here in a splendid final image of wistful fantasy rising above destructive reality. “Vodka Lemon,” a prize winner at Venice, is in fact a classic art film, so bizarre and consciously poetic it may puzzle the ordinary filmgoer. But beneath its whimsy and sadness, the chord it strikes is universal.
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“Vodka Lemon” ((star)(star)(star)) plays Fri.-Thu. at the Music Box Theatre. No MPAA rating (parents cautioned for violence, language and a scene of sensuality). In Armenian, Russian and Kurdish, with English subtitles. Running time: 1:28.
