Filmes
Jornal da Mostra
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31ª Mostra > 13/02/2008
Text: Leon Cakoff, from Berlim, to ‘Jornal da Mostra’
‘LAKE TAHOE’ AND THE DARING PLUNGE INTO REAL
LAKE TAHOE is in Sierra Nevada, between the American states of Nevada and California. There is no apparent reason for this being the title of the second film by Mexican Fernando Eimbcke, whose debut film DUCK SEASON, from 2004, ran the world.
The film, which is competing at the 58th Berlin Festival, doesn’t betray the minimalist and multifaceted essence that has been a trend in modern Mexican cinema. An essence that is restless at experimenting new languages and sensorial provocations. The outside world must seem like an artificial composition to back up the inner world of characters dazed by their deranged minds. Both Eimbcke and the co-scriptwriter of LAKE TAHOE reacted guided by the memories of the loss of their parents. He lost his father and she, her mother.
The film starts with Fernando Eimbcke’s first memories and gives the impression it will get nowhere. Let alone to a distant Lake Tahoe, that might have been part, in the past, of the pre-Columbian cultures that nowadays form the Mexican State. The film starts with a car crash, a real fact in the young director’s life, which was followed by the decease of his father.
The film abuses of breaking the narrative, and the screen is several times totally dark. It makes more sense when it ends. The young man who crashes the car against a lamp pole, in small town scenery, of desolation, silence and melancholy, searches for help and what he finds is less than enough to recompose his appalled harmony. As in unconsciousness images, the film draws with honesty a real life picture. It again focuses on teenagers and a child, who they will still meet. It is really a daring film, much more evident than its fragments, which insist on abandoning the viewer in the dark.
More Berlin Festival at http://www.berlinale.de
English version: Laura Rebessi