Freshly tossed into private Catholic high school by his recently divorced mother, John (Jake Ryan) must go from good boy to heinous sinner when he falls for a girl (Skye Alyssa Friedman) who requires him to commit sacrilegious acts in order to further their relationship.
Lemonade Blessing debuted in the US Narrative Competition at the 2025 Tribeca Festival, and is the first feature film for Chris Merola, a filmmaker from Long Island, New York. He’s a graduate of USC’s MFA in Film & Television Program. He lives to make films which allow him to explore and dissect his self and the world while (hopefully) making audiences and collaborators feel seen and held in the process.
With Lemonade Blessing now available to rent from the Letterboxd Video Store on demand service, Nick L’Barrow spoke with the filmmaker about using the tropes of a coming-of-age film in the early 2000s setting, and why these stories seem to resonate so strongly with audiences.
Nick: I love coming of age films. The way you utilise the formula is great, but the way you also subvert some of those expectations are also very entertaining. On top of that, you have a contemporary coming-of-age story that highlights the absurdities of the 2000s. What was the process in blending all of those elements together?
Chris Merola: It’s a great question. I really like the formula. There’s something magical about adolescence because you retain a lot of the good of the audience because they remember what it was like during that period of their life. All of the big realisations about the self occur at this age. You’re at a place where your personality is formed enough that you can be a really distinctive character, but there’s so much potential on the table. There’s time and potential to grow, change, and evolve. And that’s the thing that really strikes about telling stories about teenagers – there can still be so much hope at the end, even if there is a lot of despair and pain at the front end. That’s what really attracts me to the genre.
Then when it came to John (Jake Ryan), I thought it was so important to make sure that from an internal and external perspective, he’s just always having shit thrown at him. I needed to make him appeal to two different people, he wants love from two different people. He’s forced to do things he doesn’t want to do, no matter who he is trying to appeal to.
As for small ways I tried to subvert the genre, I thought it would be fun to take some of the visual language that you see in the Safdie Brothers movies – Uncut Gems, Good Time, you know? Like, this level of self-absorption of the protagonists in a visual sense, where everything is in close-up or medium shots, and make it for an adolescent story. Because adolescence is self absorption, right? We have the blinders on at the age, so we made the aspect ratio 1.66:1 so the boundaries of the screen are closing in.
I’ve also been thinking about Gen Z filmmakers, too. I really like they’re tonal shifts. We were raised on shorter and shorter content that is often switching genres. In a TikTok or an Instagram reel, you can get to the end and you’ve just watched a comedic short that becomes super scary or really dramatic when it’s. You can go from a mother holding her son after a traumatic event, and cut to him jacking off to Mass Effect in the next scene and have the audience sit in the discomfort of the tonal shifts.
Nick: Expanding more on the film’s visual language – there is something so naturally awesome about filming churches. Like, they have this scale that you capture so well on the screen that makes them feel like this massive thing in John’s life. How did the setting of a Catholic school add to those narrative layers?
CM: That’s such a cool question. I’ve never gotten that question before, but it allows me to highlight how skilled our production team – which was comprised of three people – was. As you can imagine, this wasn’t a script that many churches wanted to let us film in [laughs]. But, we found a Christian church who did, and the one distinction between Christian and Catholic churches is the crucifix. So, we had the team lug a cross into the location! They had to set up 18 locations in 20 days. They were amazing. We also shot in a church that I think shot one of the Insidious films, which is pretty cool.
A lot of the camera angles in the church were high angled to make it feel like the presumed perspective of God. And the church itself is like this physical representation of the history and weight this institution just hangs over everyone that interacts with it. And I tried to make a separation between people who represent the theology of Jesus of Nazareth, like Brother Phil, and the teachers who more represent the institution and power structure that systemises philosophy. I haven’t had to think too much about the visual aspect of that, but you’re the first person to ask, so thank you!
Nick: How did John evolve once Jake Ryan came on board?
CM: I really, firmly believe that you should cast people who are as close as possible to the characters. Then whatever gaps remain, you allow the actor to fill it with improv. Jake was truly the best option for John. When I was building the pitch deck for Lemonade Blessing, before we even started casting, I had Jake on it because he really felt like the archetype of what we were looking for. When it came time to cast, he sent in a tape, and from that point it then just again became a focus on tone. How does John now view the things in the story? Because when it comes to films that have comedic elements, and knowing that what we’re doing is funny and going for the laugh, we have to then focus on going for the truth. So, by taking it so seriously, the situations themselves will produce laughter. And that’s the same with Jake and how he approached the character. The funniest line in the movie, where Jake and his friends are talking about cake farts came from Jake improvising! It was just about making sure the situation was truthful and letting the natural personalities of the actors come through that.
Nick: How did that approach to allowing the actors to fill in the gaps for the characters allow Skye [Alyssa Friedman] to bring Lillith to life? Because her performance is bold and audacious for a first time feature film!
CM: Dude, Skye is the absolute best. She’s been on Broadway for so many years, and Lemonade was her first big opportunity to jump into feature films. And there is definitely a jump that comes with jumping from performing on the stage to the screen. There’s a difference between projecting your emotions on stage versus the screen, especially in a film that’s shot mostly in close up. Where John wears his heart on his sleeve, Lilith is different. She was raised in a household where her father was a strong patriarchal figure and the only emotional security she had was to retreat inwardly. She developed a style of expressing her emotions that involves repression, a blank face. But she’s still an adolescent, so there’s cracks in the armour. And Skye was someone who could be that blank face, but show the cracks and nuances. There’s a monologue Lilith gives, and I was really worried about it during rehearsals because I didn’t want it to sound like a teenage girl that was written by r/Men [laughs]. I’m trying to give her this powerful speech, but also understanding that she is 15 years old. Her fantasies for life might be stupid, but I don’t want the audience to think they’re stupid because they know what it was like to be young. And she came up with the line, “I’m so fucking beautiful. Like Helen of Troy!” That was a great ad-lib from her! And in the chemistry reads for John and Lilith, we had a couple, but Skye and Jake just had electric chemistry. Like, 90% of what you see on screen, we saw from them on Zoom during a chemistry read!
Nick: I think why your film resonates so much is that it does feel so authentic to the teenage experience. I interviewed a filmmaker years ago who spoke about finding specificity through universality, and the idea that the more specific you are, the more people will resonate with your story…
CM: I think that’s such a true thing and it’s something that should be on like a post-it note above every writer’s computer. There were so many times when I was writing Lemonade where I was like, “Are any of these problems meaningful enough to necessitate a feature film?” Like, everyone’s parents are divorced, everyone goes to Catholic school. My adolescence was fine. So many people suffered way more than me. And then I read a Letterboxd review for the film and some guy in Germany is like, “Is this satire?” And I’m like, “No. This all happened to me!” And other people are talking about how fucking crazy Catholics are [laughs]. But ultimately people gave a shit. And being specific led to that.
Lemonade Blessing is currently available to rent on the Letterboxd Video Store.
