Duck Season (2006)

DAZED AND CONFUSED How I Spent My Lazy Sunday, by two Mexican teenagers

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. Pizza is the sustenance of choice for 14-year-old buddies Flama (Daniel Miranda) and Moko (Diego Cataño), the better to fuel their parent-free afternoon of indolence and Xbox in the unremarkable Mexico City apartment where Flama lives with his mother while his parents fight through a divorce. And before the inconsequential yet unforgettable day turns to night, a prickly pizza delivery guy (Enrique Arreola) and a restless teenage neighbor girl (Danny Perea) join the cocoon.

Sometimes the building's power goes out. Always, the scenes — shot in black and white, with plenty of space for the evocative music of the Mexican power-pop trio Liquits — cut to black, as if to induce a quick catnap. A feature debut for writer-director Fernando Eimbcke, Duck Season unfolds with a slaphappy logic that only looks casual. In fact, every unfinished conversation and banal picture on the wall (one's of ducks) matters as four little people share one memorable little day.