alr

Duck Season
(Temporada de patos)

Directed by Fernando Eimbcke.
With Enrique Arreola, Diego Cataño, Daniel Miranda.
Mexico/US, 2004, DCP, black & white, 90 min.
Spanish with English subtitles.

An uneaten pizza, two bottles of Coca-Cola, a tray of pot brownies, a tacky painting of ducks and an Xbox acquire quizzical significance in the single-apartment pressure chamber of Eimbcke’s debut Duck Season, all of which gives the deceptive impression of the film as a puzzle to be solved. It turns out, however, that the only real puzzle here is adolescence itself, the slippery focus of the director’s career thus far. The film begins as a portrait of a lazy Sunday afternoon between friends Flama and Moko, who’ve ordered a pizza to supplement hours of languishing in front of the TV while their parents are out. Upon being refused payment, the delivery guy protests by lounging around with his junior-high customers, and he is followed soon after by a female neighbor claiming that her oven’s not working—a bizarre setup that proves mostly an excuse to collide four differing expressions of adolescent curiosity, yearning and frustration. Eimbcke composes his low-stakes miniature with an eye toward symmetry and domestic rhythm that alternately evokes Yasujiro Ozu and Jim Jarmusch, while his take on restless youth suggests a demented tweak on The Breakfast Club.

PRECEDED BY

  • Sorry for the Inconvenience (Disculpe las molestias)

    Directed by Fernando Eimbcke.
    With Leonardo Cruz, Armando de la Vega, Liz Maro.
    Mexico, 1993, digital video, color.
  • Half Time (Medio tiempo)

    Directed by Fernando Eimbcke.
    Mexico, 2014, digital video, color, 5 min.

Part of film series

Read more

A Visit from Fernando Eimbcke

Current and upcoming film series

Read more

Melville et Cie.

Read more

Psychedelic Cinema

Read more

Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: The Art of Harry Smith

Read more

The Shochiku Centennial Collection

Read more

António Campos and the Promise of Cinema Novo

Read more
sepia photo of Artie Freedman in silhouette with a video camera at show

Boston Punk Rewound / Unbound. The Arthur Freedman Collection

Read more

The Yugoslav Junction: Film and Internationalism in the SFRY, 1957 – 1988

Read more

From the Jenni Olson Queer Film Collection

Read more
a mausoleum that looks like a miniature Spanish cathedral, next to a variety of others, against an evening sky

The Night Watchman by Natalia Almada