Vodka Lemon Tastes Like Almonds

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.

In other news, before we get to the movie, Central Cinema has a new spring menu. (Which is not this pdf on their site. That's the old one.) 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.