Duck Season

I read somewhere that this is the best Mexican film of the year. If this is true, then the Mexican cinema is not doing well at all. Not so much because it's a bad film, but rather because it's an ultra-low-budget film shot in the setting of a panel apartment. Mexican cinema is probably extremely undernourished, which doesn't sit well with me given the fact that Mexico is the home of some top contemporary directors and I have seen several films with significantly higher budgets. Duck Season is a small unambitious film that partly resembles the work of the Czech New Wave of the 1960s and partly the production of the American independent scene. The banal adventures and encounters of four characters in one apartment in a large housing estate, reminiscent of socialist construction from the 1970s at first glance, do not seem sufficiently substantial for a story, but they are somewhat enticing and gradually draw the viewer into the plot. Each of the four characters carries frustration within them. The pizza delivery boy gradually reveals himself to be an unsuccessful intellectual who is frustrated with his current profession, another of the characters is weighed down by his parents' divorce, and another is lonely. One meeting then changes their view of the world. Funny dialogues, irony, and decent acting are the strengths of Duck Season. Overall impression: 60%. (30/11/2008)