Disappointment doesn’t always happen in an instant. It can sneak up on you over a long period of time. One day you might wake up like Isaac, a schlubby and bald man who struggles to find acting work and worries endlessly about his nighttime incontinence in Lemon, co-writer-director Janicza Bravo’s feature film debut.
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| Photo credit: Lemon/IMDb |
Played by Brett Gelman (Dinner In America), Isaac is a pretentious, bitter man who inflates his past accomplishments to put down those who are currently more talented than him. He's a mediocrity filled with nothing but rage. His 10-year relationship with Ramona (Judy Greer) was always built on shaky ground and her constant business trips designed to get away from him reveal a couple that passed their expiration date long ago.
A series of loosely connected subplots tell the story of Isaac’s morose approach to life, and all the warning signs that he might be dangerously mentally ill. There he is, being ruthlessly vindictive toward one of his acting students (Gillian Jacobs) who reminds him of the woman who left him for being a miserable lump of a person. His cruelty resurfaces when he invites another student (Michael Cera, sporting one of the funniest haircuts you’ll see in a film in 2017) to his decrepit and diseased-looking apartment for a dinner that is merely an excuse for him to punish Cera’s character for earning a role in a movie that shoots in Europe. When he throws a large slice of cake in a fit of sexually confused passion, it’s clearly the most active Isaac has been in a long time.
That cake-throwing incident tuckers him out. Unfortunately, it’s the last time Lemon achieves a sustained moment of comedic tension. The film shambles along at a pace that is as lethargic as its protagonist. Because the movie is interested in cringe humor, jokes are wrapped in many layers of contempt for the ways people lack self awareness. Communication breakdowns and microaggressions rule, as characters make mealy mouthed pronouncements that offend everyone in the room.
That kind of toxicity is a valid and thematically rich pursuit, but the film’s structure prevents it from fully exploring how people truly create misery for each other. Various scenes in Bravo and Gelman’s script often feel like rough drafts for a series of films (or a TV show) involving Isaac rather than a single cohesive story. Two family gatherings take up the bulk of Lemon’s runtime. (One is with Isaac’s accusation-prone family and another takes place at a barbecue with the Caribbean-immigrant family of an uncomfortable woman Isaac guilts into going on dates with him.) Both scenes would be worthwhile settings for films by themselves. But as presented, each comes right up to the point where they would be delirious pieces of discomfort comedy, but Bravo and Gelman take their feet off the gas pedal and cut each scene before they could achieve full squirm potential.
And for a movie that already runs extremely, bitterly cold, that’s a death sentence. When the jokes are un-propulsive on purpose, the film needs a comedic take on Hitchcockian tension to build momentum. By ending scenes before they become excruciatingly, comedically tortuous, Lemon begins to feel like a halfhearted dissection of how adulthood’s disappointments make us build pernicious, toxic walls around us at all times. Unless the movie wants to disappoint you, thus proving its point all along. Dang, maybe it’s brilliant, after all.
Director: Janicza Bravo
Writers: Janicza Bravo, Brett Gelman
Starring: Brett Gelman, Judy Greer, Michael Cera, Nia Long, Gillian Jacobs
Rating: 2/5 stars
Available in limited release and on demand now
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