Lemon

This was the opening film of the Rotterdam film festival 2017 (iffr.com), and as such may give rise to expectations of something remarkable or otherwise special. Alas, I cannot think of many positive remarks about this film. Several people around me had a lot of laughs throughout the running time, but I had mostly trouble to produce even a tiny smile. Maybe I'm embarrassed seeing a definite loser on a definitely downhill path, where everything he does fails on him. And it would certainly have helped when Isaac had only been just a tiny bit of sympathetic. Now it is all just sad, nothing humorous about it. I know that many people delight (schadenfreude) in the suffering of others, but I'm not one of those. (Counter example: I love all the Ulrich Seidl movies, where you also find yourself embarrassed while watching, wondering whether you can stand it much longer. Nevertheless, I always endure to the end and even watch these movies more than once. Best example: his Paradise trilogy, especially Paradise: Love.) Anyway, apart from me the audience was not happy with this movie either, as it ranked a lowly 158th (out of 172) place for the audience award.

There were some links between Isaac's life at home and the acting classes (like the "I I I" that offended his girlfriend in an early scene). Are these classes an artificial construct, introduced by the film makers, in order to make a point?? (If yes, I missed it.) Or is it just a means to humiliate others or to showcase his own shortcomings?? (Partly, see next paragraph.)

The final Q&A clarified several things. For example: this movie resembles the lives of the film makers, feeling out of place (black, Jewish, etc), and it resembles their personalities too. There was a question about music and composer, but the answer escaped me. There was a very valid question about acting classes, coming down to: are they really that way?? The answer was that teachers are very abusive and impulsive as a rule. They can quit class and run out, or behave otherwise very crazy. There was a question about the family reunion, whether it was for real?? The answer was that a comedy can make sweet what is shown on screen. It is something not happening to you, so you can feel good in spite of it, like feeling less lonely. Lastly, the Q&A clarified the title of the film: Lemon stands for a lame person or thing, or something useless or crappy. As the film makers explained, that meaning of the word is obvious to all native English speakers.

Finally, a positive remark, in spite of everything: in the closing scene where Isaac's car is taken away to a garage or more probably a scrap yard (Isaac: "it just died on me"), we see the final credits roll by. For that reason these credits seemed not overly long, unlike the feeling I have with other movies. I've the impression that credits become longer every day, exhaustively mentioning even the smallest contribution in full (catering, chauffeur, and so on). It can be that this all is necessary in the context of financing the project, but it borders on annoying and only forces you to grab a flashlight and leave the venue before the lights get on.

This is the only movie that I have ever taken the time to write a review for on IMDb, and my sole motivation is the hope that someone will see this and save themselves the 85 masochistic minutes that I just put myself through. This is one of those movies that you want to turn off from the moment you start but you just keep watching in the hopes that it will get better, and the next thing you know it's an hour in, the movie is still terrible, and screw it - you might as well finish it at this point because the prescription opiates haven't worn off yet.

My girlfriend roped me into this debacle with a trailer that promised a mix between Juno and Wes Anderson, but what I got instead was A Serious Man after it had been eaten by a 400 pound trucker named Larry, poorly digested, and ultimately deposited into a toilet bowl at a rest stop. This movie is so bad that I actually felt it was below Michael Cera to take this role. Michael Cera is too good of an actor to be in this movie. Let that sink in.

This "film" feels exactly like what it is - a poorly executed imitation of some of the great indie films of our time, written by a man and a woman who likely knew that no one in their right mind would make this thing so they had to make it themselves. It has all awkwardness and low-budget characteristics of Napoleon Dynamite but with none of the charm, and its attempts at humor are so forced that I'm not sure an entire bottle of Dulcolax could have moved things along.

We as a society love a good bit of cringe in our films, since art often imitates life. If you like a good cringe every now and then, you might look forward to the scene in which the protagonist (whatever his forgettable character name was) attempts to kiss his (also forgettably named) male co-star. On the surface, this scene should have made my skin crawl, but instead my skin was crawling as I thought about the fact that someone actually invested time and money to put this lightly-polished piece of garbage into the annals of film history and expect people to revere it as art. If this is art then the scab I tore off my leg while watching YouTube earlier today is a Van Gogh.

I could further analyze on a scene-by-scene basis, but frankly I am close to nausea already as I rehash just exactly how angry it made me to sit and watch attempt after attempt to be a quirky indie movie fall shorter than Tyrion Lannister.

I would rather lobotomize myself with a chopstick than watch this movie again.

I know this movie isn't for everyone, but it appears that many negative reviews are the result of people not being able to empathize and have compassion for the main character, rather than being focused on any specific qualities of the movie. While it is understandable that you might have a negative reaction to this dark, witty portrait of a very troubled man, it is a shame that so many will be turned off by the generalizations and surface complaints in many of the negative reviews and never have a chance to experience something different. And Lemon is different.

This is a movie about Isaac, played perfectly by Brett Gelman, who compulsively turns off everyone around him. He is obnoxious. He is self-centered. He has no "people" skills. Yet, he is trying. And that is the thread that ties the movie together. We witness a never-ending series of Isaac's attempts to connect with his girlfriend, who dumps him, and with the people he teaches in his theater class, and with a commercial director hilariously played in a cameo by Megan Mullally, and with a new love interest. There are excruciating scenes demonstrating Isaac's awkwardness in every situation, but the actor and the director, Janicza Bravo particularly mine the differences (real and imagined) between Isaac's eccentric white, Jewish family and his new love interest's African American family for some dry humor.

Throughout the movie, while it is exasperating at times to see Isaac ruin his relationships with his dysfunctional and at times even hostile behavior toward others, Gelman admirably gives Isaac a crucial likability, nonetheless, that keeps us hoping he will succeed at something, and with someone, and gives Isaac the humanity that gives some of us the empathy to understand that he is not evil - he's just a mess, emotionally and physically. This is a rare movie experience, albeit an often uncomfortable one. However, it is a real achievement that there is a lot of dark humor to smile about, and a lot of creative, realistic dialog that propels the story and makes us know and understand Isaac and the other characters enough to care about them. It was a pleasure to see this movie, and I hope there is a lot more to come from Bravo and Gelman, who are married in real life.

The good: everything is off in this story. It's off on purpose though. The characters, especially one, is quite certain a total weirdo, but the whole story oozes weirdness. Not laugh out loud funny weird, but more of a smirky, quirky kinda weird humor.

More good: what made it also interesting for me to watch, were the terrific (weird) soundtrack and the photography. Both were excellent. The acting is great as well.

The bad: weird characters in weird stories can be interesting, but I always need to feel that the main character is humanlike. That isnt the case though, making it harder for me to sympathize with the leading character, who is a total f90k up and a incredibly blunt and unsympathetic weird guy.

The story: an insecure, middle aged f80k up is desperately trying to be succesful in acting and directing. He is terrible at both though. He is a terrible person as well. Just totally unsympathetic. Wanna watch 1 hour and 15 minutes of a weird obnoxious dude?

Recommended only for those arthouse movie fans, who like weird...

It's difficult to rate this movie as for me I'd give an 8 as I was really amused throughout. A score for a wider audience would be much lower as it's quite a divisive film. I think the film is trying to make fun of the pretentiousness and self- absorbed nature of the characters, and one of the ways is by filming in an arch, avante garde manner. The style reminded me a lot of Yorgos Lanthimos in the way characters dispassionately speak past each other and the rather surreal nature of a lot of scenes. Most of the characters aren't particularly likable or relatable but that's good in my opinion. Why should a character in a movie be relatable to my life?, and it's the bad or unlikable characters that are the most interesting in a film. That's not to say the characters are bad, just rather solipsistic.