Sometimes art is impenetrable. Think of a director like David Lynch. His goal isn’t necessarily to deliver a coherent story, it’s to challenge the viewer or to evoke a mood or allow him to express something. While there is undeniable value in allowing an artist to express themselves, the product of that expression maybe isn’t always meant for an audience. That might be true of director and co-writer Janicza Bravo’s new film, Lemon, which is available to watch on-demand today.
Bravo co-wrote the film with star Brett Gelman (who happened to appear in the new season of Lynch’s Twin Peaks) and it tells the story of Isaac Lachmann, an aspiring actor whose life goes into a tailspin when his girlfriend breaks up with him. However, while that is ostensibly what the film is about, it doesn’t unfold in the usual way. For one, Bravo doesn’t seem particularly interested in making the audience feel sorry for Isaac. Something is off about him and Gelman makes sure we know it. The first thing we ever see Isaac do is grab his crotch after he wakes up and then smell his fingers. His behavior only gets stranger from there and while a lot of the movie is satirical, just about everything Isaac does reminds us that even amongst weirdos, he always takes the cake.
However, that weirdness could be dismissed, even accepted if Isaac weren’t also such a condescending dick. When we meet him, his once promising acting career (though that’s according to him, so who knows how self-aggrandizing he’s being) has stalled to the point that his only regular gig is as an acting coach. Though we don’t get to see Isaac act very much, we can already tell from the self-important way he talks about the craft that he’s probably not as good as he thinks. That becomes even clearer once he starts critiquing his students.
In Alex’s (Michael Cera) case, Isaac is overly complimentary because he wants to ingratiate himself to this young, equally self-important and seemingly successful actor. In the case of Tracy (Gillian Jacobs), Isaac just wants to make an earnest, perfectly capable young actress fell like shit. Those moments are pretty awful to sit through and, unfortunately, giving the audience an enjoyable experience doesn’t really seem like the film’s goal.
If Lemon is about one thing (and I’m not sure it is), it’s about the way people demean each other to make themselves feel better. While Isaac is frequently guilty of this, he’s hardly the only one. Whether it’s the way Isaac’s sister (Shiri Appleby) relentlessly berates people on the phone or the way his brother (Martin Starr) belittles Isaac’s participation in a Hepatitis C awareness ad, nearly every character is guilty of making others feel small so they can feel big.
Perhaps the most consistent recipient of that kind of treatment, though, is Isaac himself. For instance, the scene where a casting director laughs at Isaac’s age and weight or when a bored photographer repeatedly insults his face. However, the worst moment comes in the film’s climactic scene, where we watch in real time as Isaac has explosive diarrhea, realizes he’s out of toilet paper, drops his phone into the fouled toilet bowl and then reaches into his own feces in order to take it out. It is worse than it sounds and while the moment is probably supposed to be played for laughs, the delivery is so straight-forward that it’s difficult to see the humor. Still, unpleasant as that entire scene is, there is something clever in the way the film spends so much time getting the audience to watch its characters be debased, that it suddenly uses that scene to do the same to the audience itself.
Based on that trick alone, it may seem like Lemon is worth watching. Maybe there is something worthwhile in watching the way people struggle against loneliness in a world where everyone is constantly trying to wield power over everyone else. Maybe there’s worth in a film that demeans its audience in order to help them to identify more with its lead character. Or maybe those are all just “Emperor’s New Clothes”-esque arguments that makes it easier to stomach the fact that this movie forces its audience to watch a guy take a dump and then calls it art.
