Vodka Lemon

At one point in the middle of this movie, I couldn't help thinking to myself, "I love men!" (not that this is a rare thought for me). In the midst of a cold Armenian winter, an old almost destitute widower, visiting his wife's grave, falls in love with a widow woman who is visiting her husband's grave. He gives her his coat to wear on top of hers as they walk home together and gives her a sip from his flask and pays her bus fare (and the back fares she had been too poor to pay). And he starts singing. Really, what could be more charming than that?

Throughout the film, the widower sells off almost everything he owns: his television, the wardrobe he and his wife had received as a wedding present, his army uniform. When the widow woman asks him to help her sell her daughter's prized piano, he helps her bring it to the road, but can't bring himself to let her sell it. The film ends with him playing a song as the two of them sit happily at the piano. And that is the message of the film, and of the whole Armenian people, as far as I can tell: circumstances have been bad and will continue to be bad, but we will have our cigarette and alcohol and love and with these things, there is hope, not a lot of hope, just a little.