April 1, 2004

NEW DIRECTORS/NEW FILMS REVIEWS; Life's Astringent Taste Can Go Down Smooth
By ELVIS MITCHELL for the New York Times

"Vodka Lemon" just might be the world's iciest postcard film: you will never be so happy to sit inside a cozy, theater as when you watch the actors exhaling clouds of warm breath over the blindingly white expanse.

But the thicket of relationships that the director, Hiner Saleem, has created and weaves his cast and camera through is so invitingly hotblooded and crowded with hilariously melodramatic incident that the snowbanks are not nearly as forbidding as they initially seem. Eventually the chilly air becomes a character; it has the astringent sharpness of the title drink that everyone in the movie downs, and complains about.

The picture, which will be shown tonight, tomorrow and Saturday as part of the New Directors/New Films series, starts with an old man being pulled across the snowy wastes on his bed, an image right out of a dream. But Mr. Saleem's gifts come from giving these outlandish visual statements a grounding in the everyday reality that the characters experience. He is headed to a funeral, and ''Vodka Lemon'' charts the intermingling -- marriages, death and sexual complications -- in an Armenian village. Like most of the other New Directors/New Films offerings ''Vodka Lemon'' is set in a place that almost makes us want to applaud for the sheer industry required to get a camera crew there.

Chief among the citizens is the wily Hamo, played by Romik Avinian. With a grizzled jaw line one could scratch to start a fire, Mr. Avinian dominates the picture as if he has finally grown into his surly, direct charisma. This fine guarded actor anchors the goings-on. After attending so many funerals, Hamo has begun a flirtation with a much younger woman, the 50-ish widow Nina (Lala Sarkissian). She feels a void in her life, and he simply recognizes now as the time for both of them to move into a new adventure.

The ravaged and impoverished village also must cope with its own deficits. The support system in place during Soviet rule is long gone, with several residents fondly griping about the comforts, such as they were, that the Soviets provided. There hasn't been much change; life in this flash-frozen community has gone from minimal to Spartan, but nostalgie de la boue is still nostalgia.

''We have nothing left but our freedom,'' one villager grouses. Mr. Saleem understands that need is the central motivating force in the villagers' lives: for heat, food, emotional humidity and clarity.

Mr. Saleem's layering does compensate for the lack of formal structure, though the picture is provisionally set around the shock waves caused by the imminent wedding of Nina's granddaughter. But the picture does not need an elaborately contrived plot. What it has instead is a neighborly, fresh-air quality; all the doors in the miniature snow-globe of a town are open, as is the chatter and curiosity about everyone's familial intrigues.

The movement from one conversation to another gives a likable freedom to ''Vodka Lemon,'' and allows Mr. Saleem to set up a few running jokes that combine quotidian absurdity with thoughtful melodrama, like the opening shot of the old man, and a few other freakish outbursts that have to be witnessed to be believed, and savored. It is an intelligent gamble on Mr. Saleem's part; he knows that if he's not going to satisfy audiences with convention, he should at least supply a few entrances as detonation devices.

''Vodka Lemon'' could be an Ice Capades version of a Beckett play, with a group of seasoned though modest hammy actors in complete control. Their affectlessness gives the movie an atmosphere of hypothermia-laced surrealism, with shots of drama serving the same purpose as the vodka; both keep the blood flowing. This movie has an antic, mordant visual poetry that matches up with the rancor and feeling in its population's souls.

VODKA LEMON
Directed by Hiner Saleem; written (in Armenian, Kurdish and Russian, with English subtitles) by Beatrice Pollet; director of photography, Christophe Pollock; edited by Theodora Mantzouru; music by Michel Korb; production designer, Albert Hamarash; produced by Fabrice Guez. Running time: 88 minutes. This film is not rated. Shown with a six-minute short, David Licata's ''Tango Octagenario'' tonight at 6 and tomorrow night at 8:30 at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center, 165 West 65th Street, and Saturday at 9 p.m. at the MoMA Gramercy Theater, 127 East 23rd Street, Manhattan, as part of the 33rd New Directors/New Films series of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the department of film and media of the Museum of Modern Art.

WITH: Romik Avinian (Hamo), Ivan Franek (Dilovan), Zaal Karielachvili (Giano), Lala Sarkissian (Nina), Armen Maroutyan (Romik), Astrik Avaguian (Avin), Rouzana-Vite Mesropian (Zine), Témou (Azad) and Armen Sarkissyan (Bus Driver).


Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company