Fernando Eimbcke studied film direction at the Centro Universitario de Estudios Cinematográficos of the UNAM (1992-1996). He started his career directing music videoclips and short films. His feature debut in Mexican cinema was the 2004 Temporada de Patos (Duck Season), which won several Film Festival awards including the Ariel Award for Best Film. His latest film, Lake Tahoe, won two awards at the Berlin International Film Festival. He speaks exclusively to LWLies.
LWLies: Lake Tahoe was developed with the support of The Sundance Screenwriters Lab. How did this process assist you and how many changes did the script go through before you had a version that you knew you wanted to bring to the screen?
Eimbcke: In the lab, [co-writer] Paula Markovitch and I worked with different advisors, every one of them gave us very good ideas, but definitely the work with John Lee Hancock [Perfect World] was amazing. He showed us our own script in a new perspective. The script had a lot of drafts, and when I say a lot it means a lot! And at the end the final draft was very similar to the first draft. I think I needed to make that kind of search.
LWLies: This your second feature following Temporada de Patos, what experience were you able to bring to this project having already had one feature under your belt and what similarities and differences, if any, do you see between the two films?
Eimbcke: When I finished Temporada de Patos I thought I had learned something about screenwriting, actor’s direction and how and where to put the camera. But when I wrote and shot Lake Tahoe I found myself like a first time film writer/director, and I would like to continue working in every future film like in the first one. I don’t want to be a ‘pro’. Sounds strange but I want to make every film with the fears and doubts I had in the first film, in some way those fears and doubts propel my creativity.
About the similarities between Temporada and Tahoe, both of them are melodrama with a slight farcical tone, but in Temporada the farce tone was heavier. About the differences, the protagonist in Lake Tahoe deals with a stronger conflict than the Temporada characters. Lake Tahoe is a kind of road movie, while Temporada is like an anti-road movie. Lake Tahoe is about one character while Temporada deals with a choral structure.
LWLies: I think I’m right in stating that you are a graduate of the prestigious Centro Universitario de Estudios Cinematográficos, one of many excellent film schools Mexico boasts. How essential is the school for young filmmakers in Mexico and what role has it played in producing another remarkable generation of Mexican filmmakers?
Eimbcke: Yes I studied at the CUEC, and as far as I know there aren’t so many film schools in Mexico, there’s the CUEC, the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica and some universities like the Iberoamericana have a kind of film program, but not as a career. I think that film schools are good for some people, for me it was very useful, and a lot of great filmmakers like Alfonso Cuarón and Julián Hernández studied in the film schools, but I don’t think is essential. A lot of the best filmmakers in México like Reygadas and González Iñárritu never went to a film school.
LWLies: Lake Tahoe won the FIPRESCI prize at this year’s Berlin Film Festival. How much did this award mean to you on a personal level? And in terms of enhancing your reputation outside of Mexico, how significant do you consider the award to be?
Eimbcke: In a personal level a prize means recognition of the work of all the crew that worked on the film. And as director I feel very proud and thankful. A prize helps the film to get attention, and that’s invaluable with an independent film with unknown actors. A prize can help you to find funds for your next film, but at the end I find it kind of strange, the prize system. I mean, to decide which film is better than another? We’re not talking about football where two teams play to demonstrate who’s better; we’re talking about films. I don’t think a film is better than another, they’re just different. But when you apply to a festival you accept this prize system. But also, when the film wins a prize I turn into the happiest person.
LWLies: The setting of the film is very important and you make much of the somewhat sleepy, small town environment. Where exactly did you set the film and what aspects of your location did you particularly wish to emphasise?
Eimbcke: The film was shot in Progreso, Yucatán in the south east part of Mexico. The location was proposed by Alexis Zabé, the cinematographer. When I wrote the script I thought of an arid place, an industrial place, but when Alexis read the script he proposed a tropical place, I asked him why if this story talked about the dead, and he told me that he found a story about death but also a story about life. In Progreso we found that kind of aridness/dead and tropical/life kind of feeling.
LWLies: Amongst the many subjects central to Lake Tahoe is the difficult transition from adolescence to adulthood. Diego Cataño, with whom you have worked previously and who strikes me as one of the most interesting actors at work today, conveys this notion beautifully. Could you just say something about Diego and what directions you gave him in terms of creating his character?
Eimbcke: Diego is a great actor. He’s really young but very intelligent, sensitive and generous. His idea of acting is to make the character in front of him exist. If the character in front of him exists, he exists. His idea about acting is about generosity. About the direction I gave him: if you trust in the conflict you gave the character since the script you don’t need to say to many things to the actor. Diego understood in a very clear way what the Juan’s character wanted. To escape, just escape.
LWLies: The film is obviously filled with a very interesting cross section of people and types and seemingly random incidents. These include a lethargic dog-loving repairman, Lucia, the punkish young waif with an infant son, and a Bruce Lee obsessed technical whiz-kid. How do you feel, if at all, each helps Juan come to understand his grief and to understand that sometimes in life inexplicable events occur?
Eimbcke: Even though Tahoe doesn’t work in a choral structure, Paula and I were really concerned to build the other characters with a conflict. Those conflicts resonate in a special way in Juan’s character because after his loss his perception of the world is completely different. The most important thing for Paula and me was that the characters and their conflicts help Juan without knowing it. The characters and their conflicts are in some way absurd and inexplicable, like death.
LWLies: The film is very precise in terms of composition. Can you say more about your favouring of quite static shots and your collaborative work with Alexis Zabé, another in a long line of excellent technicians from Mexico?
Eimbcke: I don’t know why. I just don’t like to move the camera. Maybe I don’t have an elaborate kind of cinematography mind, so I imagined the scenes in the simplest way and I tried to be faithful to that until the end. Alexis is one of the best cinematographers in the world. I learned from him. He’s not just a DP, he’s an artist, a true artist. He helped me with the script, the cast, everything. He’s very intelligent, sensitive and stubborn, a fact that I’m extremely thankful for. I don’t like to work with people who say yes to everything I say.
LWLies: Critics are quick to compare you with Jim Jarmusch. Is the reference flattering or tiresome and are their other directors from who you draw inspiration? Ozu seems to have a bearing on your unhurried visual aesthetic.
Eimbcke: About the Jarmusch comparison, I grew up in a non-cinematic family, I didn’t go to the movies so often, but I remember that on Sunday mornings I used to see in television Laurel and Hardy, that sense of humour, that simplicity and the melancholic black and white made a deep impression on me. All my friends were into Star Wars, I never saw Star Wars until I was 30-years-old, and I accept it is a good film, but it didn’t make an impact on me. When I was in film school, a friend of mine showed me Stranger Than Paradise and I found in the film a sense of humour, a simplicity, and a melancholic black and white that transported me to those Sunday mornings. Then I had the chance to see Ozu’s Tokyo Story in 35mm, the feeling I experienced in that screening is the reason why I make films. The other film that inspired Lake Tahoe was De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves. I wanted to make a film where the objective was really simple like a bike or a car but the meaning behind that object was really deep.
LWLies: Like your compatriot Carlos Reygadas, you seem to be very fond of enigmatic titles. Was Lake Tahoe always going to be the sticker on the car bumper at the end or did you toy with other destinations?
Eimbcke: Lake Tahoe was always a sticker on the car bumper. The name appeared in the first treatment as ‘Do you remember Lake Tahoe?’ I love Raymond Carver and the title sound me like a Carver title, it was like a kind of tribute. At the end I decided to named it just ‘Lake Tahoe’, because when we were shooting the film people asked us what was the name of the film, and when we answered ‘Do you remember Lake Tahoe?’ they responded very confused, ‘No I don’t remember Lake Tahoe’.
