“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..” —Harvard Film Archive
DUCK SEASON / TEMPORADA DE PATOS
A film by Fernando Eimbcke
(Mexico, 2004, 85 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Now streaming on YouTube, iTunes, Google Play, Vudu, and Amazon Prime
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