This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

Absolutely brilliant

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

What did I see within about 1 hour and 20 minutes? A black-and-white depiction of things what 2 young schoolboys and 1 older schoolgirl do when/if they are left alone... And if a pizza man refuses to leave. Well, mostly trivial things, and non-trivial ones are not inviting, as they are partially over-sophisticated, partially incomplete... True, directing and camera-work are distinct and uncommon, but they are the main values of Temporada de patos to me. Performances are so-so, not memorable, and the logic of events is not always clear or well explained. The ending leaves to be desired as well.Yeah, it is a film about young teens - but not for teens, especially who live "in the now", who prefer more eventful fun and hanging about. Thus, a film for art's sake - or vice versa, but its means and goals did not get through my head in full.

Fernando Eimbcke's Duck Season is rich in its character observation and details and light on its story's events and plot-progression; I don't know about you guys but I wouldn't have it any other way. At only eighty-seven minutes long, the film paints a beautiful image on the languidness of adolescence and how a lot can happen when a group of people are sitting around doing practically nothing while unsupervised for several hours. If this sounds like a certain American, eighties classic to you, then you're on the right track.The film captures one of the laziest Sundays I've ever seen that starts with two best friends, who lounge around in one of their own urban apartments in Mexico, when one of their mothers leaves for work. The two fourteen-year-old boys - Flama (Daniel Miranda) and Moko (Diego Cataño) - carefully split a bottle of Coca-Cola before sitting on the couch playing Halo. When the power inexplicably goes out, the two are left to their own wits to entertain themselves. They find company by the name of Rita (Danny Perea), a girl who states she's sixteen-years-old and arrives claiming her oven doesn't work and needs to bake herself a cake that will only take about fifteen minutes. She spends the time ruffling through the boys' kitchen while they sit on the couch and look to order a pizza, half mushroom, half salami, just the way they like it.When the pizza driver, Ulises (Enrique Arreola), arrives just a few seconds late of his thirty minute deadline, the boys refuse to pay him. Ulises won't leave without the money, meaning he isn't going anywhere, despite the boys firm in their jurisdiction not to pay him. Ulises agrees to play Flama in a soccer video game when the power comes back on for a brief time, but even after practically winning, he still finds himself without the cash. The argument isn't about money, we can shortly tell, but it's because there needs to be something to argue about and the boys need to feel like they're taking a firm-but-fair stance on something.This day continues on, with the quartet of misfits lackadaisically sitting around the apartment, talking endlessly about nothing incredibly significant, looking through cartoon pornography, talking intimately about their homelives, and learning about each other. Why am I rating this so high if I'm elaborating on so little and sounding rather unenthusiastic through my typing? Because this film is about as exciting as living one of these lazy Sundays we're all incredibly aware of, whether we spend the day laying on the couch or in bed, listlessly looking through our phones, watching TV, going online, or doing whatever we may be.Director Eimbcke, who also co-wrote the film with Paula Markovitch, understands the dreary days of adolescence, where almost nothing but video games, sugary soda, pornography, and pizza make any sense. The kind of day where you sit in a cloud of monotonous funk that hovers of you and serves as a bad case of laziness. What Eimbcke and Markovitch also understand are the directionless - but sometimes incredibly significant - conversations you and your friends may have that could go on to have a strong impact on you as a person. That is what Duck Season is an ode to - those conversations you'll look back on.Shot on an identifiable shoestring budget, with no-name actors, it's remarkable to say how many aesthetic attributes Duck Season bears to make it more than your average independent film. Wisely shot in black and white to emphasize essence more than color detail, the film's cinematographical work by Alexis Zabe is sublime, as it focuses on the steady-static shot and sharp camera angles over sloppily-photographed camera-work. To combine that, Eimbcke utilizes medium-length shots that are just long enough to establish mood and environmental detail but just short enough so boredom doesn't set in. If you feel your eyes wandering throughout the screen you watch Duck Season on and your mind maybe drifting a bit, congratulations, you're becoming one of the main characters.Aside from a few tonal inconsistencies that really jog the film's one-setting timeline, Duck Season is an interesting and investing piece of work. It shows the desire for companionship amongst adolescence and the true effect a lazy Sunday (or, in this film's case, "un Domingo perizoso") can have on a gaggle of different individuals; think of The Breakfast Club with a Hispanic cast and you have a marvelous, underrated work of art.Starring: Daniel Miranda, Diego Cataño, Danny Perea, Enrique Arreola, and Carolina Politi. Directed by: Fernando Eimbcke.

***SPOILER ALERT*** (KINDA, ANYWAYS)I love independent films. I love international films. I love character driven films without special effects set in few locations that are sometimes in black and white. I saw the trailer for "Duck Season" on IFC (A channel I watch regularly) a year ago...I thought that it looked interesting so I put it on my Netflix queue. I just watched it yesterday and I have to say that I was bored out of my mind. I was completely uninterested in anything that happened to these kids...I waited for some element of the film to spring up and draw me in someway. I really wanted to like this movie. It was dull, bland, uninspired and I pretty much had to FORCE myself to see it all the way through.I understood the symbolism, the coming of age tale, the friendship, the pizza delivery mans internal struggles, the gay undertones, the symbolism of the duck painting that the parents are fighting over, blah, blah, blah....The problem is that I just didn't care for ANY of the characters. Nothing the director did made me care about their plights, nothing that happened in that film made me want to invest anything in them. Not the *ahem* "action", not the dialogue, not the "conflicts", nor the characters....NOTHING.I was bored after an hour and the film is UNDER 90 MINUTES LONG! I felt like I was sitting there waiting for something to happen...nothing did....Well, it DID...I just didn't care when it did. Who lets a stranger take a bath in their tub? Especially an adult? Fifteen minutes of high people staring at a painting of ducks doesn't do it for me. The last time I was this frustrated and disappointed in a film was Junebug. This gets a 3 out of 10 from me...I don't know what the rest of you were watching but this "film" did NOTHING for me. One.

From the looped wire triangle at the beginning to the sideways handicapped sign are only foreshadows of the film one is about to witness, but elements of reality that these four characters seemingly all simultaneously walk. Their adventures are their own, but their separations equal. The realization that ducks fly on their own path, and the movement that each character seems to find is the climax, but the denoumount is not evident. This film is not the sort of film that one walks away from with complete understanding, but nevertheless the eldest man, having had more trials, walks away with his "curse". This film is more than a story of love and triumph, but rather a guideline for which the human condition should follow. The hidden neutrality of each defined character is over ridden by their desires. The desires that humans have, not those that we often put on pedestals. Anyone who wants to walk away with their own human condition on their mind should see this "documentary" of true liberty!