Mexican kids - Temporada de patos

Temporada de patos has gone the rounds of fests and swept the Mexican equivalent of the Academy Awards. Being a minimalist at heart, I don't know why people keep saying this is "a slight conceit" and "not much happens" and stuff like that. Not much happens in Samuel Beckett's Endgame and Waiting for Godot either -- except a consideration of the most important questions about existence. Cut out the crap, and you may be left with the good stuff.

It's been said that the dumb silences in Jarmusch are smarter; I don't think so; they're just hipper-looking. This is a not a movie about hipness, but about everyday life, and its moments of transition, focused on a couple of fourteen-year-olds in a middle class apartment in Mexico City on a Sunday and a pizza man who stays to argue over getting paid and a sixteen-year-old girl from next door who stays to do some baking because her oven isn't working and, let's face it, she's lonely.

Actually almost nothing happens in Antonioni's L'Avventura either but it was given a famous award at Cannes for inventing "a new cinematic language." In fact real time, and the reduction of eventfulness typical of real life, are so rarely expressed in cinematic language it seems something quite new when they are, and this, to me, is the virtue of Duck Season -- as well as its sincerity and, despite its modesty, its emotional validity.

Mexico loved Duck Season but in America it's politely nodded to but then everyone has to say "it's a slight conceit." The thing is, Antonioni's L'Avventura contained not only adults, but elegant Italians, including Monica Vitti. It's not such a pleasure to look at Moko (Diego Cataño) and Flama (Daniel Miranda). Flama's nervous mama leaves them to an Sunday of Slayer and large lovingly poured glasses of iced Coca. Do you remember that Coca Cola used to have cocaine in it? It's obvious that Moko and Flama are getting hopped up. But then the electricity goes off.

Minimalism is like Zen meditation. If you think of nothing, if you stop and sit, if you simply count to ten over and over, you will open the doors of perception. That electrical shutdown stops the action. Periodically Duck Season does that. Duck Season is a boring movie. But it's also an adorable movie (I think that's why it made the sweep of the Mexican awards). Beckett's plays are boring too. But they're also hilarious, tragic, and profound. Funny what all you can do with nothing.

Duck Season encourages close observation. It begins with a series of static shots of middle-distance scenes around the apartment complex where the action, in black and white, occurs. These set us up to appreciate the value of stillness. But the movie is a joke. Flama's mom keeps coming back worried that something hasn't been turned off. When she's finally gone the boys peek out and scream with delight. The joke is that their fantasy perfect Sunday isn't going to happen. The non-stop Slayer action is constantly interrupted.

Duck Season makes a bad painting of birds in flight into a huge symbol.

Flama's parents are involved in preparing for a bitter divorce, and the painting is one of the biggest bones of contention. Flama's own imbitteredness is reflected in his mastery of the cruel put-down. Curly-haired, cupid-lipped Moko has been his pal forever. It's not clear whether Moko gets turned on by Flama or it's merely that all his memories of getting turned on involve Flama because they're always together. Director Fernando Eimbcke worked with the young actors to invent his plot. There are in fact many films where nothing happens and they are the hardest to describe, because "nothing happens" means that every tiny detail is a plot element.

The pizza man works for a company that pledges no charge if delivery isn't within half an hour. Ulises (Enrique Arreola) is so named because he's sidetracked on his journey and almost never comes back from it. Flama insists he's over the thirty-minute zone by eleven seconds. Ulises challenges that claim but Flama won't pay so the delivery man stays on to play a soccer video game to see who wins. When Rita (Danny Perea) serves them all marijuana brownies, they're deep in Lotusland and nobody's going anywhere for a good long while: the high expands the time that was already stretched for us by being slowed down. Using Ulises as the exemplary traveler, Eimbcke slyly points out that getting stuck is part of any serious journey. He paints well enough with the personalities and habits he had on hand to create elegance and meaning. Moko's confused, emerging sexuality, Rita's concealed loneliness, Ulises' dreams of return to San Juan (his Ithaka), Flama's anger at his divorcing parents' petty squabbles, are so cunningly engraved on the plot's minimal surface that they stay with you.

As the pizza man's name shows, this dull Sunday in a Mexico City apartment is a wild and rather dangerous journey. Despite the natural opacity of fourteen-year-old boys – which we'd never have penetrated if they'd kept playing their video games – everyone reveals themselves in Duck Season. Slowing down action opens up character.

As film critic Michaël Melinard of the Paris newspaper L'Humanité says, Eimbcke needs to be grouped with the new Mexican filmmaker elite – Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñárritu, and Carlos Regadas. Jane Austen, one of the greatest novelists in English, famously described her marvelous books – whose social scale was indeed restricted – as "the little piece of ivory on which I work." Eimbcke works on a little piece of ivory in Duck Season too, and his social scale is as restricted as Jane Austen's, but he has a knack for getting close to his characters, and he shows us that in the right hands less is more.

No special effects, frenetic, head-spinning editing here - just a simple story about a day in the lives of two 14 ear old Mexican boys that turns out to be anything but typical. Eimbcke is clearly a major talent in the making,the simplicity belies his canniness and empathy with the human condition. The comparisons with Jim Jarmusch's low key delights are valid, there is a similar languid economy of action, there are also shades of Beckett here too, and Eimbcke has an eye that finds beauty and humour in the most mundane situations.The playing is wonderful throughout, Catano as Moko and Miranda as his pal Flama are the films core and things seem to happen around them, rather than to them, the catalysts are pretty teenager Rita (Perea)the neighbour in need of an oven, and hapless pizza delivery man Ulises (Arreola). I suppose at the film's core is the redemptive power of friendships,as in "Gregory's Girl" or "Stand by Me" both of which share an intuitive insight into adolescence and teenage awakening. There is even a hilarious post credit coda for all us credit fiends that clog up the aisles once the film ends!Simple,heartwarming, surreal and ultimately uplifting. Unmissible.

As usual, IMDb voters are VERY easily entertained. "Duck Season" was a big disappointment to me. It is played more for laughs although there were some poignant moments, too. Unfortunately, I was starting to feel as bored as some of the characters. Could have done without the "dead animals" scene, it really wasn't necessary. The film was also shot in B&W which surprised me but seemed appropriate. There isn't a lot of meat here, but if you like character studies, it isn't bad. Enrique Arreola as the pizza guy gives a very good performance. The younger actors weren't that convincing.

5/10

This is a wonderful example of the freshness in contemporary Mexican cinema. It's the story of two fourteen-year-old boys, who've been best friends for a long time. They get the chance to spend a whole day all by themselves at home playing video game and eating junk food. What they expected to be a quiet and pleasant day ends up being a total mess after the arrival of a teenage girl neighbor and a pizza delivery guy. Most of the film is a comedy which made everybody in the cinema laugh out loud. But the character building is so wonderfully done, that one gets very interested. In the beginning, the director made 2 or 3 minutes entirely of shots of the neighborhood in which the boys live. He makes us feel exactly how it is to live there. Also there's a slight theme of homosexuality (one boy realizes that he may be falling in love with the other one) that is very well developed.

It's basically a bittersweet story with really funny moments and outstanding actors performances, direction, screenplay and cinematography (the film was shot in black and white). It won 7 prizes, including best film, best director and best actress in the last Guadalajara Film Festival. A must-see!

If you want to have a good time, go to this movie. Notice I didn't feel impelled to be pretentious and say film. This black and white movie is like a Woody Allen film but with at least two of the characterizations more three-dimensional. I won't ever forget the excitement of sitting in the front row of a 1200 person theater and hearing everyone laugh at once. And the excitement or of seeing video games widescreen just a few feet away--I was on the edge of my seat. Another great scene: watching whether the pizza deliveryman would beat the clock as he raced to the top floor of the apartment building. And then there was the visiting neighbor girl who could give Diane Keaton a run for the money. The key to this wonderful comedy in its perfect timing. After the movie which I saw at the Festival of Cortometraje in Guanajuato, Mexico, I met Paula Markevich, who polished the script. She told me she kept changing lines while she watched the boys rehearse. A film made with tenderness, humor and care. Enjoy, enjoy!