The old adage about making sour fruit into sweet refreshment is implicit in the title of Romanian writer-director Ioana Uricaru’s promising first feature “Lemonade.” Martha Stewart herself, however, would be stumped by the wizened, acrid lemons our hapless heroine is handed in this heart-pinching hard-luck story from America’s green card-seeking margins.
Bearing the tersely empathetic, socially conscious stamp of producer Cristian Mungiu, albeit with less of his pristine formal finesse, Uricaru’s tough study of a young migrant caretaker marrying hastily to secure the American Dream for herself and her young son is as damning of U.S.
institutional corruption as Mungiu’s own work has been of Romanian authorities.
Though Uricaru permits a dash of cockeyed hope into proceedings, an upright spine of against-the-system anger keeps “Lemonade” suitably tart throughout.Mungiu’s prestigious imprimatur should help garner significant interest in “Lemonade” on the festival circuit following its Berlinale premiere, with select
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