Customer Reviews

Lake Tahoe

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Experimental film is important to push boundaries. Sometimes the films work magic and something spectacular is discovered; other times, well it's a failed experiment. I think Lake Tahoe sits closer to the latter.

This is an incredibly subtle film. It takes patience to watch this film. Every single shot is bookended with nothing for 5 to 10 seconds. A given shot begins with a camera locked solid steady on a scene where nothing happens. That shot is held for 5 or 10 seconds. Then some kind of action occurs, a car enters the frame, stops, something happens, and then the car exits the frame. Instead of moving on, the director holds that shot for another 5 or 10 seconds. The camera never moves. Frequently the film is butt cut away to black, sometimes something significant happens with sound, or mostly nothing happens.

Not much happens in this film. A boy runs into a telephone pole. His car won't start. He searches for a mechanic. He meets several people along the way. About 45 minutes into the film each character starts to make sense, and then they finally fit into the story. That first half hour is very slow. But it does set the stage for the reveal at the end.

The film is unrated, and is presented in Mexican with English subtitles. There are a few moments of subtitled strong language. There is a bedroom scene with a female briefly topless in dim light that lasts about 30 seconds. The film is not long, one hour and seventeen minutes.

On the one hand, this was not a very good film. The bookended shot technique was so slow and methodical as to almost induce sleep. On the other hand, the shots were so slow and the story so slow to develop, I kept thinking something has to happen. In fact that last half hour or so, is very impactful. My son and I talked about this film for a good half hour afterwards. There was something good here.

Film Movements doesn't disappoint again. The DVD included a 6 minute short, Noodles, that was a fabulous surprise. This film was done with normal editing and shot length. The French film has no dialog, but speaks volumes. Thank you again Film Movement.

Mexican director Fernando Eimbcke was news to me before this feature (his second), but after watching LAKE TAHOE, I'm going to keep an eye out for his future work. He's got great, assured technique, a good hand with actors (the cast here is marvelously offhand), and a refreshing sense of how to structure a screenplay. TAHOE starts like an extended shaggy dog story, funny in a deadpan way, but rather familiar in style (think early Jarmusch). Then, midway through, as we piece together the storyline, the narrative becomes richer, darker, and unexpectedly moving. This one will linger with you for days afterword. Highly recommended for fans of the offbeat (and here's one film that manages true eccentricity without feeling in the least forced). Very fine work all around.

Somewhere along the road, director Fernando Eimbcke has missed the boat with this film. Although the concept of escape as a theme, it doesn't come across to the audience. According to Eimbcke, this story has autobiographical elements. And aside from that, the film style he employs is not only highly unusual, but annoying.

A brief summary: Young teen boy, Juan has crashed his car into a telephone pole, nothing serious. He then attempts to get it repaired in this desolate town at various autorepair places, but encounters a number of quirky people along the way. To accomplish that, he needs to accept whatever their idiosyncratic behavior or odd demands.

According to an interview, director Eimbcke has said that when he lost his father, he crashed the family car, and wondered what state his mind was in at the time. The viewer isn't given an indication about the crash. There is nothing to tell us that the boy is grieving, until much later on do we learn the truth. Give us a clue, let us feel that mood by observing if not by telling.

Second, Eimbcke tells us the boy is "always on the run" all the time, running from place to place. Correction, the audience doesn't get that, what we see is a young man just trying to get his car fixed. What the viewer learns is that it is frustration that makes him go from place to place. That is clearly not "always on the run". We are expecting something to happen.

Third, the shooting style of the scenes. It is ok to see wide-angle shots of the buildings, land, town, etc., as it gives the viewer the feeling of observing the whole picture. Another oddity is the long shots of an empty scene. But what was annoying is the blank screen approach. At time, it was minimally 10-20 seconds of blank screen. Also, it is understandable to have the blank screen as a transition, but the blank screen was blank within the same scene. This style, the director said was initially a mistake, and then they used black screen as a narrative resource, dramatic, or as silence.

This film is minimalist style, subtitles are readable, translation is efficient, and the acting is generally good. Unfortunately, Eimbcke is not experienced like those who influenced him, the great directors Vittorio de Sica or Robert Bresson. Don't be surprised if you after viewing you scratch your head and say, "what the hell was all that about?" ......Rizzo

Fernando Eimbcke's exploration of big issues in the settings of small-town life in Mexico is very human, often entertaining and moving.

After crashing his family's car into a telegraph pole, Juan (Diego Catano) spend a day trying to find help to fix it. He meets an old paranoid mechanic, a young mother who's leaning towards punk singer career, and a martial arts fan. Through these absurd encounters Juan eventually comes to accept the personal tragedy he was running away from.

Lake Tahoe, Fernando Eimbcke, Mexico 2008

The epic struggle of car repair. 3*

I can deal with "slow" films, or experimental technique. I enjoyed "The Tracey Fragments," fer cripes sake. But Lake Tahoe has all the dynamism of a Hou Hsiao-hsien epic, without the beauty of presentation, and it's stylistic conceits rapidly become annoying and self-indulgent. Lengthy shots, characters walking through distant landscapes or sitting wordlessly staring, and at every cut, it seems, there is a long period of blank, black screen ... er, excuse me, significant use of negated spatio-temporal frame sequences. Wow. Heavy. Boring. Used once or twice, or at critical junctures, perhaps effective or interesting. Used as the standard cut (and we're talking about 5, 10, even 20 seconds of dead black) it soon begins to grate on the nerves, even if one could intellectualize a "meaning" to the practice.

This is not to say "Lake Tahoe" has no redeeming value. There are moments of deadpan humor. The setting in a Mexican town between abject poverty and telenovela wealth or big city bustle is informative. Near the end, when a Major Event is alluded to, that certainly would color our perception of the first 2/3 of the film, we maybe begin to approach some Significance. But by then it's too late to recapture flagging interest. The film is mercifully short, about 1:20, the cut to credits a surprising relief ... and yet an annoyance, since we had begun to have hope that the film might go somewhere.

Fwiw, the title is explained only at the very end ... and seems to have nothing, really, to do with the film although I'm sure some will find transcendental effulgence in it.

The accompanying French short, "Noodles," is cute, and totally unrelated to Lake Tahoe in theme or style, but this is a rare foul ball for the Film Movement. I can't bring myself to give it more than 3*'s.

Usually I start off one of these things with a little capsule summary of the plot, but I really don't feel like that is necessary for this film because in the end the plot isn't really all that important to the enjoyment of the film. In short, it's about a young man wandering from vignette to vignette in order to find solace from a tragedy that he and his car endured.

In actuality, this is one of those films that you just have to sit and let watch over you. Previous reviewers have suggested that this is a hearkening back to the cinema verite of latin american auteurs such as de Sica, and I would aggree that he is definitely a major influence on Eimbcke. But I would suggest that there is almost more of a feeling akin to La Cienega in the long shots and uncaring family. Or the meandering story in the 1966 classic Blow-Up. In all of these films I feel that there is unremitting commitment to portraying a very specific tone, and that's what makes Lake Tahoe work. For example, the way that Diego Catano wanders in and out of wide angle landscapes expressionistically conveys his surreal odyssey for car parts. I highly recommend this if you're looking for something that won't dictate what you get out of it, but instead will put you in a mood to think about it yourself.

Through all of my huffing and puffing about theme and cinematography I forgot to mention that the reason that the movie is enjoyable to watch is that it balances out all of the weighty moments in the film with snippets of macabre humor. It's not the type of movie that will necessarily make you laugh out loud all that much, but if you take a step back, you'll see that there's a dark humor to the film, and by extension (because of the realism) the world it represents.

There is something very refreshing about the minimalism on display in this film. Fernando Eimbcke throws the viewer into a situation without explaining its backdrop, and this allows for the film to reveal its larger preoccupations only slowly.

The story appears to take its starting point from a minor accident - a kid runs into a telephone pole and has to figure out how to get the car fixed - but that minor accident later turns out to be merely a symptom of a deeper tragedy, and the difficulties that the kid faces in solving the minor problem turn out to be crucial to his process of dealing with the larger problem.

What is unique and remarkable about this film - its subtlety and stylistic simplicity and its refusal to dramatize what is in fact a pivotal day in this life of its main character - is also what is likely to put off most viewers. The camera hardly ever moves. There is no continuity editing - no cuts on action, no cuts to reaction or closeups. Pretty much what you get are a series of long shots in which the "action" and interactions take place. The shots are beautifully framed and their breadth establishes the loneliness and isolation of the main character, but the camera tends to linger a moment or two, even after the characters have exited the screen. Some shots are punctuated by blackness - and unlike even a film like Stranger than Paradise where a similar cinematic approach is employed, here the blackness lingers a few seconds past the point where it is uncomfortable, causing me to wonder (at least the first couple of times) whether there might be something wrong with the dvd. There is sound in these interludes and some of the most crucial moments happen between shots, and we only hear what happens.

Perhaps "Lake Tahoe" is best seen as a response to all of those films in which some kind of tragedy or unexpected event leads somebody to break out of their ordinary routine, have meaningful encounters with interesting people and wake up the next morning a changed person. All of that happens in this film, but without any of the melodrama and without the musical cues and the pivotal moments where life's lessons are highlighted, so that one might be forgiven for thinking that nothing much happens at all. The "Lake Tahoe" of the story functions as a symbol that is to this film as significant (or as trivial, depending on your interpretation) as "Rosebud" to Citizen Kane - but without any of the melodrama that surrounds its revelation in that film.

I was very intrigued by this film, and was impressed by the boldness and austerity of the director's vision, and by his refusal to introduce artificiality into the picture. At the same time, I think it is a hard sell - I'm sure I couldn't sit through it again except perhaps on the big screen where the beautiful images could compensate for the difficult pacing. I recommend this film for those who enjoy cinema that push the boundaries of what films can be.