DUCK SEASON
aka TEMPORADA DE PATOS
Year: 2004
USA: Warner Independent Pictures
UK: Optimum Releasing
Cast: Enrique Arreola, Daniel Catana, Diego Miranda, Danny Perea
Director: Fernando Eimbcke
Country: Mexico
Language: Spanish (English subtitles)
USA: 85 mins
UK: 90 mins
USA Rated: R for language and some drug content
UK Certificate: 15 contains strong language and soft drug use
USA Release Date: 7 April 2006 (Limited Release - wider)
USA Release Date: 31 March 2006 (Limited Release - wider)
USA Release Date: 24 March 2006 (Limited Release - wider)
USA Release Date: 17 March 2006 (Limited Release - wider)
USA Release Date: 10 March 2006 (Limited Release - New York and Los Angeles)
UK Release Date: 11 March 2005
UK Distributor
(in Spanish)
Synopsis
The feature film debut of writer/director Fernando Eimbcke, DUCK SEASON aka TEMPORADA DE PATOS was filmed in Mexico City in 2003 and takes you into one particular Sunday morning in the lives of two fourteen-year old boys, Flama and Moko.
Sunday, 11 A.M.
Apartment 803
Ninos Heroes Building
Nonoalco Tlatelolco Housing Development
Best friends Flama (Daniel Miranda) and Moko (Diego Cataño) have the apartment to themselves, and a glorious day of videogames and junk food awaits them. Having mastered the fine art of pouring the perfect glass of Coca Cola, the boys set up shop in front of the television with a big bowl of chips, ready for an afternoon of Halo on the X-box. The door buzzer interrupts their intense shootout. Rita (Danny Perea), Flama's sixteen-year-old neighbor, wants to use his oven to bake a cake. Flama waves her away into the kitchen - she looks too determined to be brief - intent on getting back to the game. The boys continue happily annihilating each other until…disaster. The power goes out.
After a few painfully idle moments, the boys move onto the next item on their agenda: ordering the pizza. Stopwatch at the ready, they call Telepizza, your friendly pizza, a place with a 30-minute guarantee. The race begins.
A delivery man on a motorcycle with a large pie (half mushroom, half salami) and two large Cokes winds his way through the streets of Mexico City and up eight flights on foot only to arrive at his destination 11 seconds late, according to Flama's watch. As the power is restored to the building, a showdown of another sort ensues.
The pizza man Ulises (Enrique Arreola) will not leave without payment, and the boys insistently invoke the Telepizza guarantee. When Ulises parks himself outside the apartment, Moko challenges him to videogame contest where the winner takes all - pizza and soda - and the loser, nothing. Ulises accepts.
As their fate is being decided by an old-school video soccer match, the unthinkable happens: the power goes out again, leaving the dispute unresolved. Unsatisfied, the stalemate is re-established, and Ulises calls in the delay to his boss.
Fighting off boredom, the four navigate their way through the unexpected turn of events. They entertain themselves by experimenting with the metric conversion of a chocolate cake recipe and the wish-fulfilling properties of multi-colored candies. Tentative banter leads to surprising observations, as the topic of conversation shifts to the strange behavior of adults. Together, the four contemplate a painting of ducks on the wall, which has become the source of a bitter power struggle between Flama's parents, who are getting a divorce.
The restlessness of being stuck indoors gives way to a giddy abandon, and the unlikely foursome stumble upon little revelations and insights into the kind of youthful longing that stays with one beyond well past adolescence.
DUCK SEASON (TEMPORADA DE PATOS) is a film that shows us that when the light disappears, the stars can be seen.
Filmed in black and white
