From the minds of married couple Brett Gelmann and Janicza Bravo, comes Lemon, a dark romantic comedy about a self obsessed actor who under goes an immediate self progression, after his indifferent wife suddenly leaves him.
Based on comedian
Brett Gelmann's most recent work, Dinner with Friends with Brett Gelmann and
Dinner in America with Brett Gelmann, as well as knowing his marriage to film
director Janicza Bravo who happens to be an African American woman, the topic
of racial injustice toward African Americans is very much on Brett Gelmann's
mind. So much so to write and star in a feature length film about the
subtilizes of racism of Lemon.
Lemon is a
brilliantly and deliberately avant-garde made film that is much about a white
actor who gets dumped by his girlfriend than it is about the world of acting.
What Lemon actually focuses on is the way supposed white liberals and art
types, treat and respond to African Americans. That though the idea is that
they understand and recognize the struggle of the African American experience,
it doesn't mean they want to be personally integrated with Africans Americans
themselves. Lemon uses adoptive parenting, vandalism, art critiquing and media
as constant physical means of a white person's ignorance of racism in the 21
century. In the movies opening scene, a television program featuring a black
woman describing slave era events of her ancestors is on the TV, as our
protagonist is sat up sleeping in front the television with a urine stain on
the front his pants. Later through the movie the protagonists sister has an
adoptive black child and in a later scene our protagonist bonds the most with a
wheelchair bound elderly black woman at an Black populated get together,
pointing out the deep down aloofness of Jewish white people only being okay
with being in the accompaniment of black children and elderly black people and not
young black adults to avoid black culture.
Lemon also comments
about the male Ignorance of misogyny and male dominated spaces, having a female
characters lines and scenes cut mid way of speaking to display the indifference
towards from the male characters point of view because she's female.
Lemon is the few of
it's kind that actually dares to show the absence of blackness and black people
in mumblecore films and what happens when they become part of the films focus.
Exposing its white plight and without blatancy making for an awkwardly
interesting film, that gets under your skin the more you think about it.
