Lake Tahoe | Fernando Eimbcke, 2008
A father dies, a mother mourns. A son wanders the streets. This is not Lake Tahoe, but the Yucatán, Mexico – specifically a tranquil little peninsula town defined by its expansive pale blue horizons, crumbling architecture, weed-infested streets and curious, somewhat over-friendly locals. It is an unfortunate telegraph post just outside this small town of Chicxulub that our young protagonist, Juan, the Son, crashes his car into at the beginning of the film. We never see this incident take place but hear the rush of air that precedes it and dull metallic thud that confirms impact, followed by the struggling of the car’s engine as it refuses to start. We then see Juan walk off with head down, trudging purposefully through static wide-angle shots of Mexican sky until he finds someone to relieve him of his car troubles. So begins Lake Tahoe; the rising writer/director Fernando Eimbcke’s second feature after his acclaimed 2004 debut effort Duck Season. Part of the reason Duck Season saw such praise was because of Eimbcke’s confident handling of the youth he seeks to portray – he removes them from the adult world, almost as if kids and adults are two different species entirely, each finding it increasingly difficult to understand the other. Lake Tahoe is no different, of course, and Eimbcke takes it further still by ensuring that almost each and every interaction that takes place in the film is between the protagonist and one other character. In this way, with a narrative defined by separate encounters, Lake Tahoe strongly evokes the work of Jim Jarmusch – quite clearly an influence here – though there is also a certain love of natural light that one wouldn’t commonly attribute to his films.
Of course, the film’s setting is a far throw from the idyllic, Californian tourist spot after which it is named, but the reason for this title becomes clear soon enough. It is primarily this barren Mexican landscape that sets the scene and thus the tone of the film, too, especially when combined with Eimbcke’s lingering and sometimes exquisite static wide shots that make up much of its first act. Lake Tahoe is a remarkably still film; there is very little camera movement at all save for one or two sequences in which haste is involved. Indeed, when the camera first pans – a good half an hour into the film – the movement is surprising and we feel almost privileged as a result, to now be able to follow Juan’s movements footstep by footstep. This aforementioned stillness also does well to reflect the general feeling of suspended time that one may feel in such sleepy places. It takes a while, not only for the film itself to pick up speed, but also for its main and tragic plot point to take shape and form. Soon we realise that Lake Tahoe is not so much about a young boy’s attempts to fix his family’s car, but more about coming to terms with loss. His impassive odyssey through the town’s numerous Auto Repair shops and unwillingness to rest until the car is fixed signifies his wish for normalcy once again, both with the car and in his family life. In some ways the car itself – a bright red Nissan Sedan – comes to symbolise the boy’s late father. Life is a mess, and the one person who could perhaps be relied upon to deal with such a mess has left the boy adrift in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps the most impressive feature of Lake Tahoe however is its gentle humour, a quality that often threatens to distract but ultimately and successfully complements this looming feeling of sadness that is always present, just slightly out of shot.
Our Rating:
