Over the past decade, Mexican filmmaker Fernando Eimbcke (b. 1970) has established himself as one of the most influential young directors in Latin America. In all three of his feature films, Duck Season, Lake Tahoe and Club Sandwich, Eimbcke provides brief glimpses into the lives of young characters traversing the formable and transformative times of adolescence. Throughout his oeuvre, Eimbcke displays a remarkably deft comedic sensibility that captures the idiosyncrasies and slight wonders of childhood innocence and naiveté.

Influenced by American filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, Eimbcke’s distinct and minimalist style utilizes a fixed camera, long takes and frequent cuts to black. The slow pace and minimal plots may confer a modest and unassuming quality, yet Eimbcke’s films are far from simple. Generating complexity in his characters and films within his narrow, self-imposed confines, Eimbcke expresses the subtle sweetness and dignity of the mundane and quotidian; banal occurrences are catalysts for both humor and plot progression.

While there is a tendency for films to exoticize childhood and adolescence, Eimbcke consistently advances beyond this trope and gives a distinct voice to his youthful characters. In Duck Season, the films’ protagonists, two fourteen-year old boys enter into an argument with a pizza deliveryman, which transforms a lazy Sunday afternoon into a fantastical day full of personal revelations and absurdity. Despite the jovialness of the film, Duck Season confronts deep questions regarding friendship, growing up and sexuality. In the more somber Lake Tahoe, the young protagonist inexplicably crashes into a lamppost and embarks on a semi-surreal search around an empty and desolate town looking for the necessary parts to repair his car. Throughout, he encounters an immense grief while interacting with the film’s assortment of strange characters. 

With their carefully developed visual aesthetics and distinct personalities, the settings in Eimbcke’s films emerge as central, equally complex characters. Lake Tahoe was filmed in a deserted industrial town, and Eimbcke’s judicious use of wide shots construct a beauty in the setting’s expansiveness and desolation. He spent over a year searching for that film’s precise location, a testament to the director’s attention to detail and focused aestheticism.

Although there is playfulness and comedy in Eimbcke’s oeuvre, his work is nonetheless centered on characters facing personal distress and internal conflict. Despite the difficulties of these struggles, Eimbcke’s films are comforting gestures that reassure the audience that regardless of life’s challenges or troubles, the journey is infused with beauty and hilarity—though you might have to look carefully to find it. – Jonathan Shpall, Harvard ‘015