SNAPSHOT
Lemon: a person or thing that proves to be defective, imperfect, or unsatisfactory. Isaac Lachmann is a dud. Isaac Lachmann is 40. Isaac Lachmann is a man in free fall immobilised by mediocrity. His career is going nowhere. His girlfriend of ten years is leaving him. And his overbearing family doesn’t help matters. What did he do to deserve this? Things were supposed to work out differently for him. Isaac Lachmann had big dreams. Now he just watches as life unravels. (synopsis via Coming Soon)
Life is pretty confronting isn’t it?
There you are thinking that everything is sailing along beautifully and – WHAM! – it’s all exposed for so much nothingness.
Granted this happens more often in art house films than real life mainly because films of that ilk (which I love) tend to overplay things for dramatic purposes but it doesn’t take away from the central truth that what we expect life will be when we’re younger rarely plays out the way we expect.
The movie looks crazy quirky but also truthful and oddly accessible, something Variety noted in their review of one of the critical darlings of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
“Lemon is a comedy of miserablism that keeps poking you in the ribs — and, quite often, fails to hit the rib it’s aiming for. Yet it’s a watchable curio, because beneath it all the director, the Panamanian-born Janicza Bravo, has a more conventional sensibility than she lets on. Her style might be described as Theater of the Absurd meets Comedy Central sitcom.”
Good thing is it seems to indicate that all that life falling apart stuff doesn’t have to be end and that maybe, just maybe, there’s a way out of the medicore void.
Lemon releases 18 August L.A. and internet and 25 August, New York City.