Lake Tahoe

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ****

On the basis of his first two full-length features -- Duck Season and now Lake Tahoe -- I'm ready to declare Mexican filmmaker Fernando Eimbcke (pronounced I'm-Kay, with the accent on the first syllable) a real original. Eimbcke's got his own tone and “take” on things, and his movies remind me of little else in the canon. Sure, you could bring up Jarmusch (as some have), but Eimbcke's work is sweeter, looser, with a distinctive sense of hopeful surprise in the world and its people -- Mexican variety. As co-writer (with Paola Markovitch) and director, Eimbcke offers kindness, hope and an open, guileless quality that proves enormously welcoming -- plus a hefty enough dose of content in an unusually quiet and subtle style. Dogs may bark in his new film, but nobody seems to shout.

Lake Tahoe begins with a bang -- on a black screen. When the first visual occurs, we see that a car has crashed -- nothing horrible: the driver -- a young man -- seems a little stunned but generally okay. He (and the film) spends the next 84 minutes trying to get that car repaired, walking into the nearby small town and connecting with one person after another and taking bizarrely funny, real, moving side-trips into the life of the town's characters. Scenes are divided by the same black screen that opens the movie, making them seem a bit like chapters in a book.

As the movie progresses, we learn the back-story, too, and of the loss our hero (well-played by Diego Cataño, who bears some resemblance to a younger Eimbcke) has suffered. It turns out that this story is quite similar to one that happened to the director, and I find it interesting that Eimbcke chose to make this his second film -- rather than his first, as I suspect many new filmmakers would have done. Perhaps holding off on telling it until he had gained more filmmaking savvy has enabled this wise and talented director to avoid that curse of the disappointing follow-up to a well-received first film.

Whatever the case, Lake Tahoe is a tiny diamond in the rough. Like the interesting poster/DVD box art designed for its US release, the title, with its see-through lettering, makes the lake itself seem more a memory, a dream of better times, than anything remotely concrete.

The DVD comes with the usual Film Movement additions: A smart little short subject, plus information on the filmmaker himself.