Film Movement wanders around in circles for ‘Lake Tahoe’

I’m especially happy to report that Fernando Eimbecke’s Lake Tahoe will indeed makes its way into theaters — since it is among one of what I would call gem film discoveries I made so far this year. Film Movement have announced the acquisition of the film which picked up a pair of awards this year’s Berlin Film festival and was the FIPRESCI’s “Revelation of the Year” selection for Cannes’ Critic’s Week (I was lucky enough to assist at this screening – read my coverage of that event here).

Initially the minimalist portrait of a teenage boy who wanders around in a small dormant town of Mexico looking for a spare car part appears to be, at least on the surface an inconsequential slice of life portrait – but I’d say by the midway point Eimbecke slowly reveals that there is a lot more going on in the film’s protagonist psychological mindset. The Mexican filmmaker first came onto the film scene with WIP’s Duck Season.

Film Movement are pegging the coming-of-age dramedy for a 2009 release, but if you happen to attend the AFI fest next week you can preview it there.

In an attempt to escape from a home where sorrow reigns, Juan, a sixteen year old boy, crashes his family’s car into a telegraph pole on the outskirts of town. Juan calls home where his younger brother Joaquín tells him that their mother is still locked in the bathroom. As Juan scours the streets searching for someone to help him fix the car, he meets Don Heber, an old paranoid mechanic whose only companion is Sica, his almost human boxer dog and Lucía, a young mother who is convinced that her real place in life is as a lead singer in a punk band. Neither colorful character has the part to fix his car so he must wait for “The One who Knows” a teenage mechanic obsessed with martial arts and Kung Fu philosophy.  The absurd and bewildering worlds of these characters drag Juan into a one day journey in which he will come to accept an event as natural and inexplicable as death.