Duck Season (DVD)
APPROX. 91 MINS. - PROD. YEAR: 2004 - MPA RATING: R
" ...an amusing, thoughtful, independent, slice-of-life film.
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Sometimes a movie can look like a million and be worth two cents. Other times a movie can look like two cents and be worth a million. "Duck Season," the 2004 release from Mexican director Fernando Eimbcke may not matter all that much, but it does wonders with a tiny budget.
Of course, the film didn't make much more than two cents at the box office in the United States, and we might have expected that, given that it is a small Mexican film, entirely character and dialogue-driven, shot in black-and-white, with English subtitles. Sadly, that probably eliminates about 99.9% of moviegoers in the U.S. But for the viewer interested in an amusing, thoughtful, independent, slice-of-life film that despite its slow tempo is long on charm, "Duck Season" makes a fascinating alternative to the higher-priced spreads.
"Duck Season" moves along, as I say, at a snail's pace and tends to take its own good time in settling into any kind of rhythm. Then, once there, it still doesn't develop much of a central conflict. Nevertheless, it casts a spell over the viewer. The film's quartet of no-name actors play characters who at first seem remote but warm up surprisingly fast. By the time the film is through, you wonder what it was all about, which is part of the fun. The director makes you think about it, and the longer the film lingers in memory, the better it gets. It must have lingered in film judges' minds pretty strongly, too, because the movie was nominated for and won any number of prizes at various movie festivals around the world.
The story concerns four people, three teenagers and a youngish adult. The opening still shots set the tone as the director shows us a large, sterile city on a lazy Sunday afternoon; a bicycle with a flat tire; a broken-down basketball hoop; and a series of tall, blank, ugly buildings. What are two fourteen-year-old boys, Flama (Daniel Miranda) and Moko (Diego Catano), to do on such a dreary day? They are at Flama's apartment, and his mother has just gone out. Why, it's time for pizza, Coke, potato chips, and video games, naturally!
That is, until the power goes out. Oh-oh. They find themselves stuck with each other to pass the time. Then the cute, sixteen-year-old girl next door, Rita (Danny Perea), comes over to borrow Flama's oven to bake a cake and winds up staying longer than she thought; and a pizza delivery guy in his mid twenties, Ulises (Enrique Arreola), comes by to deliver the food the boys ordered and winds up staying the afternoon in a dispute over who is going to pay the bill.
When the electricity temporarily goes back on, the fellows try to cram in as much video-game playing ("Halo" and soccer) time as they can, hardly noticing the girl in the kitchen, but then it goes off again. It's here, with the power off for the second and final time, that the two boys really find themselves bored out of their skulls.
Then Rita notices a painting on the wall of ducks in flight, which, surprisingly, leads to the narrative's central themes. What does it mean to be free? What does it mean to know where you're going? The boys only understand that they're young and resentful at having to live with their parents. Besides, Flama's parents are splitting up, and to him they seem more interested in who is going to get to take the duck picture than in what will happen to their son. Meanwhile, it's Rita's birthday, and she's baking herself a cake because nobody in her family remembered. And the pizza guy feels stuck in a life he didn't count on, even though he has plans to escape.
