Boy dumps girl. Unceremoniously. So begins “Dear Lemon Lima,” a pastel-crayoned feature film about a 13-year year-old, one-half-Alaskan Eskimo girl’s attempt to win her boy’s heart back after her first bittersweet encounter with heartbreak. Suzi Yoonessi, writer and director of “Dear Lemon Lima,” began writing the film as a short for a Columbia MFA film-writing class but ended up striving to create a full-length film that is “unabashedly girly” and “dealt with real life issues.”
“Dear Lemon Lima,” which opened on March 4, has already won multiple film awards, including Outstanding Performance at the Los Angeles Film Festival and the Audience Award for Best Feature Film at the Woodstock Film Festival.
Despite its impressive track record, “Dear Lemon Lima” is not packed full with award-winning actors—Melissa Leo (“The Fighter”), who was minted as Best Supporting Actress at the 2010 Oscars, does play a minor role in this film, but newcomers Savanah Wiltfong and Shayne Topp are the ones who breathe curious life into the movie. Topp plays love interest and golden boy Philip Georgey, an intelligent blond who is both condescending and ambitious. Although Philip dumps Vanessa (Wiltfong) carelessly, he encourages her to better herself and build a new image at school.
The movie’s original characters, Yoonessi said, are a combined product of both script and acting. “When I was casting, I was attracted to the kids who were playing against what was scripted, because that was what created nuance,” Yoonessi said. “He [Topp] understood that Philip wasn’t a bad guy, but he was just always right … and what can you do when you’re always right?”
Vanessa alternates between admiring and standing up to Philip. Spurred on by his thinly-veiled contempt, she creates a team of misfits (The F.U.B.A.R.s, Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition) to compete in the annual Snowstorm Survivor competition, which is inspired by the World Eskimo Winter Olympics. As the film develops, Vanessa shuttles back and forth between the person Philip would like her to be and the person she is with the members of F.U.B.A.R.
Like many pre-teens, Vanessa is concerned about her appearance, and attempts to give herself a makeover. In most teen movies, the female protagonist undergoes a transformation and happily pairs off with the star-struck, handsome stud. In “Dear Lemon Lima,” Vanessa botches the job and dyes her hair a plastic-looking white-blonde.
Her hair goes through a tortured magenta pink phase but ultimately returns to natural brown.
“[The film] embraces the perspective of a 13-year old girl,” Yoonessi said. “It is unabashedly girly. I wanted to do a story that had no shame.”
“Dear Lemon Lima” also incorporates serious concerns like bullying and suicide into a film of bunnies and rainbows, which might sound odd but creates a flavor specific to “Dear Lemon Lima.”
Yoonessi said, “in contemporary family films, people don’t deal with real issues … kids are a lot smarter than we think they are. ”
“Dear Lemon Lima” is a family comedy that reveals the immaturity, naiveté, and the heartaches of pre-teens stumbling through life with a stubbornness that is hard not to admire.
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