Interview with Fernando Eimbcke (Lake Tahoe)

[Editor’s Note: This was originally published during the 2008 edition of the AFI Film Festival.]

Writer-director Fernando Eimbcke (Duck Season) delivers a poignant, and yet subtle coming-of-age story with his second feature film, Lake Tahoe. Set in a quiet coastal town, this tells the story of a teenage boy dealing with the grief of his father’s death, but on the outset the narrative takes its time in letting the gem unravel into such territory. Instead of getting explosion of emotions, we see the characters implode with a loss of speech.

Eimbcke innovates with a language and landscape of his own, telling a story that’s loosely based on Vittorio De Sica’s The Bicycle Thief. Eimbcke joins the lead of promising international and in the same token, Mexican filmmakers in contemporary cinema – something that FIPRESCI have established early on as they set up a special screening of Lake Tahoe at Cannes this past May.  

I met with up Fernando Eimbcke at the ArcLight Theater in Hollywood.

Yama Rahimi: Fernando, I heard part of the story was autobiographical. Tell me about how tell me how did you come to the story?
Fernando Eimbcke: This story is autobiographical in some way, but not in another way because the story is about me but also about Paula Markovitch who is the co-writer. Actually she proposed the theme of the film. I was obsessed making a film about a boy looking for something and escaping from something and I went to Paula and she proposed me about making a film about death and I was like no because it’s not easy…but she insisted and insisted and we finished the script.

YR: How much of the film is based on the script and how much of it was improvised?
FE: I don’t know. I haven’t retuned back to the script. We improvised a lot. What I enjoy the most is to take out the dialogue. So we went and said is it possible to communicate without dialogue? If the answer was yes, I said goodbye dialogues. I enjoy that. I like to communicate without words which I think is the most cinematic action.

YR: I quite agree with you because the action off screen is as important as it on screen.  I like how the characters implode instead exploding with emotion. How’s your perspective on grief? How did you approach it?
FE: Something I learned from Paula is that if you are able to talk about something it’s because you processed it. That’s why people go to psycho analysis and therapy because they can express. That’s why my characters haven’t processed. I like that people sometimes can’t express themselves.

YR: What was the biggest challenge on this film?
FE: It was myself because I was insecure of the pressure of doing a second film, but fortunately I found the right people and I had a supportive team that helped me.

YR: What’s your perspective of teenagers in cinema?
FE: There’s a lot of stories about teenagers but it’s always the cool stuff which is ok but there’s not enough about the other side, the serious stuff. I like teenager films. The old man Don Heber is a teenager in a way.

YR: How did you choose the exotic location?
FE: Actually I wanted an urban location in a big city but my cinematographer said this story has to be set in the tropics where life is everywhere. Even if the characters deal with death, life is going on every where around them. Then we looked at a lot of locations and found the location in Yucatán. We went in the off season which is almost like a ghost town and it was perfect.

Film Movement releases Lake Tahoe in theaters today.