User Reviews

You'd have to have a heart as cold as the landscape not to feel for the dreadful situation in which the characters in this film find themselves. They live in the snowy wastes of Armenia, deserted by the superpowers, struggling to eke out an existence through selling their old army uniforms, televisions, the vodka lemon of the title, and (in the case of the two young women) their bodies. Several of the key scenes in the film have the characters sat in the cold landscape, talking to their dead relatives. The sense of loss is palpable. I particularly enjoyed the set piece crowd scenes, though the friend I was with found them overly self-conscious. The only way this film can move towards resolution is through magic realism: by the time it occurs, it feels a fictional solution is the only one that can be offered. The two main characters, who have developed a relationship of sorts, turn their back on the commodification of their entire existence when they decide not to sell the piano, and instead, float home on it, in an image reminiscent of a Chagall painting. Hard to know what to make of this ending - sentimental cop-out? or final statement of resilience and hope? The landscape is stunning, the abstraction of the snow works to underline the fluidity of landscape, the sense of people lost between nations, between continents even(echoed in the looks of the young women, who seem to hover between European fullness and Asian exoticism). The vodka lemon of the title works to emphasise both the harshness of the existence these people have (they drink to forget) but also their underlying hope (they drink to celebrate) and finally the sense nothing is quite what it seems (it is called vodka lemon but tastes like almonds). Interesting enough and worth 90 mins of your time.

I was a bit numb after watching the film. The film I believe was about relationships and how important that is to these people. Relationships bring them hope in a world where hope seems to be getting harder and harder to find. To someone like me that isn't familiar with the Kurds and their life in Armenia, this film gave subtle glimpses of their quite contented past. Their lavish wallpapers, the few tasteful furniture that are left, the wall rug, the richly painted or wallpapered interiors of their houses, their clothes - these all point to a recent past where life was not as hard as it is in the present. Little by little, the director tried to give us an insight to these people's lives, at the same time making us feel how difficult it was to share this with us – how hard it was to communicate this visually without making us feel like we're watching a melodrama and take pity on such a proud people. Surrealism and humor was his tools and I believe he made good use of them – the guy on horseback snatching our attention away from certain scenes, the comic skits, a photograph changing its face, a floating piano, the director snaps you out of that heavy feeling building inside you with these tools, only to fill you up again… snap… fill… snap. And in the end, you only feel numb because of the emotional roller coaster ride but feel pity? No.

The story revolves around this village where life got harder and harder as the days went by. The days slowly becomes unbearable to the point that those that can, went out to look for greener pastures bringing with them their family's remaining glimmer of hope. Those left behind that looked to them for hope only learned that those in the outside couldn't offer them anything to make their lives any easier. When all they needed was a little financial help, they were given more complications and uncertainties, even gave them a glimpse of political problems from their native homeland to which they have been long disinterested and detached from.

Everything in the village is slowly crumbling and you can actually see the wallpaper chipping off, the cracks and the stains on the walls, furniture that had seen better days and there was even that sidecar motorcycle that just died on its own and after a few minutes, mysteriously came back to life again. Everything was deteriorating even the resolve and values of the characters themselves. As they get more hopeless by the day, they slowly sell things that they hold dear, their heirloom, their memories even themselves. If they're not doing that, they're trying to get something from each other by dangling false hopes.

They are stuck in an eternal winter. They are trapped in a small village surrounded by snow-covered mountains and the only road leading out of that place leads to "Vodka Lemon" – a booze stop, where you get a swig, forget your problems and head on right back to the village in a seemingly eternal loop of being knocked into reality and being zapped into a booze-induced stupor. In between these two points is a cemetery where fittingly, men who are half awake and half dreaming spend time talking to the dead – relatives whose faces are stuck in a perpetual scowl. The other end of the long road leads to a dead end, a place where despite its affluence people from the village couldn't get anything from unless they sell something precious to them - couldn't they get work there? An old beat-up bus plies this route and its driver is probably the only person not from that village that understands these people.

As the film progressed, we see that the snow slowly melts and brown and green earth slowly peeks out of its white blanket – spring is here, change is here. The landscape changes, but the characters situation never got any better; their hope actually seems like they are melting away with the snow – and like a proverbial final nail to the coffin, Vodka Lemon closes down. The director offered us no assurance that the situation of those people would get better, he offered no solution nor resolution. He only pointed us to the people's culture and how that in itself makes for a good enough ending.

The filmmaker offered us not only glimpses of the people's culture, their marriage, their burial ceremonies, their music as well as the dynamics of their relationships, he also offered to those curious enough to search the internet, a bit of their history, telling us to find out why the years 1915 (genocide against the Armenians) and 1941 (end of the Armenian war) are important to them. He also showed how dependent these people have become of their Russian colonial masters and how lost they have become without them. He showed us how happy these people are despite their hopelessness. He also showed that despite their apparent dependence on money and material things, they still firmly hold on something a lot of rich people take for granted – the value of family and relationships, even if it doesn't give much of a solution to the problems they currently face.

First of all the cinematography in this movie is breathtaking. Not much needs to be done from the Director's perspective, as the sheer magnitude and grandeur of the snow mountains, glaciers and general landscape is overwhelming. But sitting amidst this breathtaking display of nature is a small, remote village left isolated and semi=ruined by Soviet forces, worsened by the recent emigration of the youth. What is left is a crippling, sad scenario. The movie generally is a cute glimpse into the lives of the mysterious. Yet it is a very simple movie, a rather basic, unwinding plot with a rather bland soundtrack to accompany it. But it's penetrating, contemplative and moving at parts.

This is an older, lesser known film from director Hiner Saleem.

The film is nothing but collection of wasted opportunities. Armenia, which had Armenians, Kurds, Azeris, Russians and, to a lesser extent, people from all over the USSR. You have so much going on - Communism, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Nagorno-Karabakh War, the new governments and new states and you had Kurds in the middle of all this in one way or another.

But this film doesn't focus on all these things. It barely uses them in the background.

The location and the time period are tools to tell a story. Instead, they're used just as a backdrop.

A widower goes to his wife's grave to talk to his dead wife. There's a lot of snow. A lot of poverty. He sells things several times, usually furniture, at flea markets or at flea market prices to random people he meets on his way. His son is not doing better abroad and asks his father for help. The widower meets a woman at the graveyard.

As others have said - there is nothing particularly Kurdish about this film. There is nothing particularly particular about this film. It could've been a film set in Latvia, Kazakhstan, Belarus or any of the former Soviet republics. It could've been set in Serbia, Romania or Poland. The same character can have the same story without any difference.

It's not due to the universality of the story, but due to a lack of story. A man talking to his dead wife and selling his furniture in a flea market is not a unique experience.

But one has to wonder - why make this film? Why is this film, produced in 2003, set soon after the fall of the Soviet Union? If the director wanted snow, he could've gone to any part of Kurdistan. A Time for Drunken Horses has similar themes - a child lugging things through the snow out of poverty. This film swaps child for old man, but the story is still essentially lugging stuff to sell through the snow out of poverty. In Drunken Horses we have an orphan, in Vodka Lemon we have a widower. Both feature a marriage.

This film has nothing unique to say about the Soviet Kurds, the Yazidis, Kurds in general or anything at all.

The film is wrongly labelled here "comedy" but there is nothing comedic about it. It is closer to tragedy than a comedy, but it's too slow to be tragic. It's a slow film where nothing happens. There is no plot in this film, so don't expect there to be an ending.

The acting is average, not exceptional, but I can't blame the actors for the script. The cinematography is average. Yes, the country is beautiful but you don't get points for filming pretty subjects. The camera work is average. There is no score that I recall. The use of music is sparse.

This is a film that is made to be liked by foreign viewers. This is not something Kurds enjoy watching. In this case, both would be in agreement. Very, very few people would enjoy something like this. I acknowledge that some people like incredibly slow films. It currently has 6.8/10 on IMDb, but it gets its relatively high vote from its niche audience. Most people would watch this film, would be turned off by the trailer or would not be able to finish the film.

A Time for Drunken Horses is a better version of this film, by another director. My Sweet Pepper Land is a better effort from this director.