Duck Season

Duck Season

Directed by Fernando Eimbcke

Warner Independent Pictures

4 stars



If it weren’t for the appearance of an Xbox, porn magazines, and pot brownies, “Duck Season” would look like a filmed Samuel Beckett play.

Indeed, in his auspicious feature-length debut, Mexican writer-director Fernardo Eimbcke wraps existential pretensions in the simple staples of adolescent existence, posing many questions along the way: Can videogames settle monetary disputes? Can pornography explain adolescent romance? Can pot brownies reveal the mysteries of growing up?

Eimbcke deigns to answer these questions. He is interested in the little tics and iniquities that live underneath the perfectly filled coke glasses and the uneaten crusts of delivery pizza that populate this coming-of-age story.

On this ostensibly ordinary Sunday afternoon, the rituals and securities of childhood are turned upside down. The plans of 14-year-old Moko (Diego Cataño) and Flama (Daniel Miranda) are derailed by Ulises (Enrique Arreola), a neurotic pizza deliveryman, and Rita (Danny Perea), the cute, older girl-next-door. Questions about a painting in Flama’s living room, which appropriately depicts symbolic migrating ducks, reveal that his parents are amidst a messy divorce. In a blurry imagistic monologue, Ulises soliloquizes about loosing his job at a dog pound because he refused to euthanize the unclaimed animals. Moko and Flama’s relationship, which may be more than platonic, is complicated by Rita’s sexual advances towards Moko.

Suddenly, an adolescent paradise becomes a lotus-eater limbo with all four lingering between youth and adulthood. Through the activities in this small Mexico City apartment shot in black and white, Eimbcke shows us that we might have our most introspective and colorful discoveries in this limbo.

Each of the dreamers’ tales unfolds in grand yet disquieting terms. “Duck Season” discusses youth with a grave tone usually reserved for death, ultimately disturbing many comforting preconceptions about childhood. Easily upset type-As can still find reassurance in the juvenile sensibilities the characters employ to dismiss their problems. Flama destroys the objects his parents covet with a B. B. gun, Ulises gets high to the strings of Beethoven and quits his job amidst a hallucination, and Moko works out his romantic issues through pornography and chocolate malt balls.

The obfuscatory imagery of Alexis Zabe’s cinematography imparts a sense of lethargy to Eimbcke’s otherwise graceful tale, but the force and beauty of this film persist. “Duck Season” might have been just a troubling perturbation of the blissful security of youth, but it shows us another kind of bliss, extolling the journeys we take and the wonderful people we meet along the way.

Bottom Line: Despite its pretensions, “Duck Season” proves to be a sublime retrospective on youth. Besides, there’s nothing like three teenagers and an adult getting stoned while blasting Beethoven.