Temporada de patos 2004

Critics score:
90 / 100

Reviews provided by RottenTomatoes

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: The film's calm and witty visual rhythm offers a rueful awareness of time passing and of time wasted, in ways that people tend not to appreciate fully until long after they've wasted it. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: The fullness of Duck Season is in direct proportion to its smallness; its modesty makes it bloom. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: Not much happens in Duck Season, but it's never dull: Eimbcke, a Spanish filmmaker making his feature debut, finds just the right note with his young actors and fills his film with telling detail. Read more

Neva Chonin, San Francisco Chronicle: The beauty of Duck Season is its insistence that profound human experiences can arrive slowly, in incremental packages, scattered over the course of an average Sunday. Read more

Richard Roeper, Ebert & Roeper: A film so small and understated that it was nearly over before I realized how much I was going to miss these characters once their story had been told. Read more

Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Often dull dialogue and marginally interesting characters. Read more

Scott Tobias, AV Club: A modest, beautifully proportioned peek into the lives of four uncertain young characters who aren't yet fully formed. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: Duck Season hits every one of its modest marks and then some. It's the kind of movie to send you out looking at strangers on the street with newfound appreciation and something close to love. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: As the Sunday in question spirals delicately but unmistakably out of control, Eimbcke's quiet but steely assurance asserts itself and causes all the film's disparate strands to come wonderfully together. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: Eimbcke attempts to give this story a melancholy overlay, but its main interest is in its confirmation that teenagers are pretty much the same everywhere. Read more

Michael Booth, Denver Post: Give Duck Season a chance. Sit on your watch for the first 20 minutes and see what happens. Eimbcke's gentle persuasion will reward your patience for weeks to come. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: The tender and droll Mexican charmer Duck Season captures the stalled rhythms of a lazy Sunday shared by pals, a time of idleness in which pleasure gets tangled with melancholy. Read more

Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: Effortlessly nonchalant in its observations of kids and the way the world looks to them. Read more

Ella Taylor, L.A. Weekly: Eimbcke has found a sweet and moving way to make concrete the kids' blind search for meaning and comfort. Read more

John Anderson, Newsday: Summing up Duck Season is a simple enough affair, but hardly does justice to this ironic, carefully crafted comedy, the latest indication that Mexican cinema is going through one of its spasmodic periods of renaissance. Read more

Jami Bernard, New York Daily News: It's about the kind of kids who could never sit still enough, unfortunately, for a movie that perfectly captures the frustrations, longings, obsessions and torments of the awkward years before manhood. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: Imagine Waiting for Godot performed by The Breakfast Club. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Not very much really happens in Duck Season, but in its rich details, it remembers how absorbing and endless every single day can seem when you're 14. Read more

Geoff Andrew, Time Out: Further delicious evidence of the reviving fortunes of Latin American cinema. Read more

David Rooney, Variety: Eimbcke reveals a disciplined visual sense, a good ear for dialogue and an easy rapport with his fresh young actors. Read more

Michael Atkinson, Village Voice: Duck Season is not charmless, just insubstantial. Read more

Desson Thomson, Washington Post: Director Fernando Eimbcke, in an extraordinary debut, never expresses contempt for his characters. By examining their inner lives with compassion and respect, he inspires us to do the same. Read more