To me, this movie is perfection.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

A film like 'Blue Valentine' could learn a lot from a film like 'Lake Tahoe.' Whereas that film tries to give us a sympathetic side to its characters through dialog, this film gives us that same emotional investment through pure and simple film making. The film has no pretensions. The teenage Juan (Diego Catano) is depressed. Why? At first, we don't know. The watchful eye pieces together clues throughout the excellent 81-minute run time, and by the end, a careful viewer knows Juan's plight down to a T and completely falls in love with his character and the relationship between him and his brother (Yemil Sefami).Juan's day is only made worse when he crashes his car into a telephone pole and has to spend most of the day looking for the distributor. Along the way, he meets a kung fu devotee (Juan Carlos Lara II), a beautiful teen mother (Daniela Valentine), and a crotchety old mechanic with a wonderful soft spot for animals (Hector Herrera). These characters are not just quirk for quirk's sake. They are quirk for Juan's sake.If you are a person who enjoys watching three-dimensional characters interacting in a beautiful place, then director Fernando Eimbcke ('Duck Season') has made the perfect film for you. The perfect balance of comedy, tragedy, and character study is 'Lake Tahoe'. Eimbcke also inserts a kind of treatise on film making in this movie in a strange and thrilling way. This movie will be remembered because it is minimalist without being mini-brained.I would recommend this film to everyone I know.

In Fernando Eimbcke's minimalist Lake Tahoe, family members shut off emotional expression to avoid coming to grips with a devastating loss. Teenager Juan (Diego Catano) wraps his Nissan car around a pole, then spends most of the film reaching out to others to help him fix his car, masking his need for emotional connection; Joaquin (Yemil Sefani), the younger sibling hides in a tent while the boys' mother (Mariana Elizondo) remains for long hours in the bathtub without communicating. It is only late in the film that we find out the reason for this emotional turmoil.Nominated for the Golden Bear Award and winner of the FIPRESCI prize at the 2008 Berlin Film Festival as well as several honors at the Mexican Academy Awards, Lake Tahoe is set in Chicxulub, near Progreso, Yucatan, the area where a devastating asteroid was alleged to have hit the earth 65 million years ago. Shot with mostly wide-angle static shots and filled with natural light, Lake Tahoe captures the lazy mood of a town with its vast empty spaces, sparse vegetation, and low flat-roofed buildings. The film takes its name from a bumper sticker on the family car from an Aunt who visited the famous California resort some years ago and whose meaning is revealed later in the film.The film is quiet and moves very slowly with an undercurrent of sadness, though it is not without tension and its arc is unpredictable. Interrupted periodically with blank screens (reminiscent of Jim Jarmusch's Stranger in Paradise), the dark screens seemingly provide the characters with time to pause and reflect. After Juan crashes his red Nissan, he spends most of the day trying to find a part to get the car running again and, in the process, must deal with a variety of eccentric townspeople. His first contact, the elderly Don Heber (Hector Herrera), a retired mechanic, hasn't seen the car but confidently tells him he needs a new distributor harness.Heber takes his time, telling Juan to look for the part himself as he takes care of his dog Sica, feeding him breakfast from the kitchen table while the bewildered Juan looks on unamused. Juan also must contend with Lucia (Daniela Valentine), a clerk at an auto repair shop as they wait together silently for hours for Lucia's colleague, David (Juan Carlos Lara II) to show up. Lucia is a single mother, perhaps only a few years older than Juan, who must care for an infant boy that Juan seems to know how to get to go to sleep. Lucia wants him to listen to her music and tries to get him to babysit her small child but Juan almost always says no before agreeing to anything. David turns out to be a Kung Fu expert and a devotee of the martial arts and a source of comic relief throughout the film.He invites Juan to the cinema to see "Enter the Dragon", a martial arts movie and then tries to engage him in a kicking contest while Juan stands there passively until David shouts at him in true Bruce Lee tones that he needs emotional content, not anger. When Juan goes home, he finds his little brother Joaquin playing in a tent in the yard while his mother hides in the bathtub, telling everyone to leave her alone. "What's 'condolences'?" Joaquin asks his older brother. He says that "people have been calling all day, and when I answer, everyone says... accept their condolences." Though only 81 minutes long, Lake Tahoe feels organic and not written, capturing the real emotions of people who seem unable to communicate their grief. One telling scene is when Lucia and Juan fall into each other's arms and Juan begins to cry, the only emotion he has shown throughout the film, other than hitting his car with a baseball bat. Diego Catana is excellent as Juan who appears in every scene and carries the film with an honest and effortless performance. Like Broken Wings, an Israeli film from 2002 with a similar theme, Lake Tahoe transcends the limitations of time and place to become a universal exploration of loss and how people respond to it. In Eimbcke's skillful hands, its sadness is relieved by the strength and dignity of its characters and balanced with a dry, deadpan humor that would be the envy of Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki.

Let us get all our facts and views clear about this quasi Avant-Garde Mexican film.Fernando Eimbecke's second film "Lake Tahoe" is not at all an existentialist film.It is a film of absurd ideas involving numerous boisterous undertones but not in the same tradition as that of Monty Python type of films.The viewers' interest in the film is generated right from the beginning as it takes place in some obscure sleepy town in Mexico where hardly anybody could be seen on the streets.It appears as if a lost ghost town is being portrayed on the screen.Those who look for perfection in the form of innovative cinematography would not be deceived as "Lake Tahoe" features some of the most well executed, well planned camera angels which would even put late Nestor Almendros to shame.Fernando Eimbecke is a prolific young director but it is rather unfortunate that he has been compared to the great master of cinema Luis Bunuel.He is just two films old and it is easily evident that he has a golden future ahead of him but such a tempting comparison in the early part of a young person's career might turn out to be counter productive.A final word of warning.Those who are looking for a meaningful story will be highly disappointed.This is not hard to swallow as Godard uncle stated a very long time ago that films should have a beginning, a middle, and an end... but not necessarily in that order.

After an hour, you come to understand why this Juan is driving his father's car. And not until in the end, you realize why this movie is called "Lake Tahoe".The tempo is slow, showing this day in Juan's life which makes him grow up. Ordinary things happen, but you understand that they are all very important, and no Juan day will be like this in the future and change him more.Sometimes you come to think of Jacques Tati. Both from the camera work and the sterile environments, including some glimpses of life. And very important ones too. Very strange and quite see-worthy.