About twice a year, I see a movie, enjoy it thoroughly, sit down to write about it and am at a complete loss to explain why I found the experience as gratifying as I did. It doesn’t make any writer look (or feel) very good when he can’t explain himself and considers falling back on ‘because’ as the major point of a review. Besides, I’m supposed to know better than using ‘because’ as a reason for anything. Mexican director Fernando Eimbcke’s debut film, Duck Season, is 2006’s first entry into this elite and troublesome grouping of movies.

There is no conventional plot to speak of in Duck Season (I feel like I’ve been writing that a lot lately). It’s 90 minutes spent watching two fourteen-year old boys hang out around one of their family’s apartments for a day during summer vacation. If that’s not enough excitement for you, consider that the power then goes out in the apartment building about 25 minutes into the film. In a similar vein to John Hughes’ The Breakfast Club, Duck Season’s focus isn’t on rising action or snakes on exploding airplanes, it’s on the social interactions between and the knowledge gained by its (two) teen protagonists over the course of an otherwise ordinary day. Of course, that said, I would be remiss in not quickly pointing out that Duck Season is nowhere near as melodramatic and sappy as The Breakfast Club.

As a whole, fourteen year olds aren’t particularly well represented in the world of cinema. On one hand, they’re not quite old enough to be hooking up with girls on spring break and doing keg stands and on the other hand, they’re not quite young enough to appeal to parents who are looking for a movie to which they can take their younger children. Eimbcke has changed this here; his leads, Flama (Daniel Miranda) and Moko (Diego Catana), are two of the most realistic and sympathetic teen characters that have been offered to audiences in years.

Fourteen is an awkward age because you’re expected to act the part of an adult, even though your body and brain chemistry is anything but. Even the most boring and average of days are extraordinary to teens and filled with high drama. It is this principle that Eimbcke picks up on with his camera. Employing a very sparse visual style—Eimbcke’s camera rarely moves, pans, or tilts—we are simply flies on the wall who are watching Flama and Moko navigate through the mine fields of teenage life. Minus the hijinks of Porky’s, the nihilism of Larry Clark and anyone even vaguely resembling Stifler, Duck Season is a contemplative and reflective investigation of being a tween. Eimbcke has made a film that seems effortless. It’s very easy to sink into the world of Duck Season, even if it is next to impossible to explain why it’s such an enjoyable one.

chris neumer

yes, it's true: Today, it's rabbit season. Wait, duck season. Rabbit season? Duck season? Enter Elmer Fudd.