Wodka Lemon

This is a good film -- dark, and funny, and absurd. The setting is post-Soviet Armenia, today. Life is bleak in the Caucasus; the young have either emigrated or, if they have stayed, they've either turned cruel and abusive or are exploited through prostitution or tawdry sexual encounters. Most of the people in village are pensioners, however. Everyone is forced to sell their meager belongings just to get by. Life is tedious -- unemployed men gather in small groups to drink Vodka Lemon and discuss their effete prospects. A widow and widower, strangers, meet during their regular visits to the graves of their deceased partners. A bit of human warm and humor is thus established. But what gives this film its true strength of statement, and sets is tone, are the absurd moments -- it opens with a musician sleigh-riding on his sick-bed; it ends with a piano gliding off down the road into the distance; a man on horseback gallops across the screen at odd moments and for no known purpose. There is no rhyme or reason for the poverty experienced by these characters -- its effects are pointless, random, and unpredictable and absurd.