Lake Tahoe

Related Content

• "Le Havre": Utopian Vision of Refugees in France Is Sadly Illusory
  November 9, 2011
• Iggy Pop on Making Kill City, Life in '70s Los Angeles, and the Jim Jarmusch Stooges Doc
  December 1, 2011
• Cannes 2011: What to See from the Best Festival in Years
  May 25, 2011
• "Meek's Cutoff": Kelly Reichardt's Trippy, Existential Frontier Masterpiece
  May 4, 2011
• Steve Coogan on Playing "Steve Coogan"
  June 15, 2011

More About

• Jim Jarmusch
• Diego Catano
• Aki Kaurismaki
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media
• TV Dramas

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Events Newsletter: What's happening in town? From underground club nights to the biggest outdoor festivals, our top picks for the week's best events will always keep you in on the action.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

Coming down from the Saturday sugar rush of his 2006 comedy Duck Season, Mexican auteur Fernando Eimbcke’s lovely, Yucatán-set dramedy drifts by on a similar deadpan wave of static vignettes and lingering pauses that must be 10 months pregnant. Eimbcke’s droll rhythms are reminiscent of early Jim Jarmusch and Aki Kaurismäki—here stylistically appropriate for a film about social and emotional inertia. After downcast teen Juan (Diego Cataño) crashes the family Nissan into a telegraph pole, the accident heard but not seen until after impact, he somberly ambles across the expansive, solitary desert in search of a needed auto part. He seeks help from a mistrustful old mechanic who shares behavior with his oddly anthropomorphic dog, a too-young mother with punk-rock ambitions, and a martial arts obsessive more interested in Shaolin badasses than fixing cars. Through Juan’s encounters with such eccentrics, and eventually his own family, the reasons for his melancholy emerge—waves of heartbreak in what appear to be calm waters.
July 24-30, 2009