In the endearing Mexican comedy Duck Season (Temporada de Patos), fourteen-year-old best friends Flama and Moko are all set for a perfect Sunday in: they've the house to themselves, a games console, a fridge-full of cola, a pizza delivery menu and a sizeable stack of cartoon pornography. But a power cut forces them - and some unlikely new friends - to truly interact with each other for once. Can their childhood last out the day?
Daniel Catana and Diego Miranda are fresh and naturalistic as the boys, joined by Danny Perea's Rita, the quietly corrupting girl-next-door, and Enrique Arreola's Ulises, a melancholy pizza delivery man who refuses to leave after the boys don't pay him. The four end up spending the day together, we just hang out with them, and the film coasts home on sheer charm.
"ALL THE PROFUNDITY AND INANITY OF TEENAGE LIFE"
The addition of some marijuana brownies crunches the gears a little, but also ekes out a little more depth from the characters as the weed opens the floodgates of Ulises' broken ambitions, Moko and Rita's awful home lives, and Flama's stuttering, curious first sexual steps.
Shot in black and white to a rollicking soundtrack and confined to a single set, Duck Season brings to mind Kevin Smith's Clerks, and is similarly laced with the humour of everyday boredom and an eager sampling of popular culture. Despite its tiny canvas, Duck Season soars with all the profundity and inanity of teenage life; the tenderness, the isolation, and the doomed joy of its innocent irresponsibility.
In Spanish with English subtitles.
Duck Season (Temporada de Patos) (2005)
