August Evening.

"August Evening may not be on par with the work of Yasujiro Ozu, but the late Japanese master's influence can be felt in the patient rhythms and thematic preoccupations of Chris Eska's film about an undocumented Mexican farmhand in San Antonio, Texas named Jaime (Pedro Castaneda) who, along with his widowed daughter-in-law Lupe (Veronica Loren), moves in with his ungrateful biological kids after the sudden death of his wife," writes Nick Schager in Slant.

"There are stories that depict how resilient family bonds are in times of duress, and those that reject such rosy ideals to show how tenuous even blood relationships can be, but first-timer Chris Eska's Spanish-language drama (and Spirit Award winner for Best Feature Under $500,000) quietly and bittersweetly validates both notions," writes Aaron Hillis in the Voice.

Updated through 9/8.

"Unlike Tom McCarthy's The Visitor, a meek tale of struggling immigrants in NYC, August Evening doesn't need a nebbishy white character for the audience to feel close to the material," notes Eric Kohn in the New York Press. "With lyrical interpretations of impoverished lifestyles and transcendent visual motifs based around the Zen of the countryside, August Evening evokes both Killer of Sheep and Carlos Reygadas's Silent Light, but it's not quite as audacious."

"One can say that not all that much happens in the course of the small, humble scenes that form the lives of these modestly alien presences in our midst, but Mr Eska and cinematographer Yasu Tanida have fashioned an exquisite tapestry of the materially unencumbered, one that drives the narrative forward at every turn," writes Andrew Sarris in the New York Observer. "August Evening is infinitely more absorbing and entertaining than we had any right to expect from such simple and undemanding creatures."

In the L Magazine, Benjamin H Sutton finds that "Eska's border neorealism often plays more like a melodrama - whose machinery is alternately slowed and sped up by the ennui and displacements of migrant work and limited citizenship - than a straight-forward 'issue movie.' Eska's characters have an inner life whose mere backdrop is the perpetual tension of being without status in a country where one is only valued insofar as one can work."

IndieWIRE interviews Eska.

Updates, 9/5: "As the movie inches along, its virtues turn into faults," writes Stephen Holden in the New York Times. "Its elliptical style leaves unanswered questions, the pace begins to feel choppy, and the lyrical pauses become a recurrent tic. In the later scenes, any of which would have made a satisfying ending, your patience is exhausted."

"The opening sequence, which emphasizes the visceral nastiness that underpins every American breakfast and fast-food meal, is effectively detailed by director Chris Eska's agile handheld camera, a device that works with purpose in focused instances in which the film resembles an existential tone poem," writes Steve Dollar in the New York Sun. "Otherwise, it's a distraction that only makes one wonder why so many recent movies with Mexican themes insist on the shaky cam. Do we need a remake of Amores Perros every year? Does prompting a need to ingest Dramamine convey a greater sense of emotional truth?"

"Ultimately, what Eska doesn't take from Ozu is more important than what he does," writes Sam Adams at the AV Club. "His use of handheld video has none of Ozu's formal rigor or compositional beauty, which makes its longueurs feel more distended than poetic.... The unforced ease of the performances make August Evening an intermittent pleasure, but its images aren't strong enough to sustain its undisciplined length."

"With a maturity that belies his years - and a production that belies its budget - Eska has delivered an insightful meditation on the mysterious nature of family bonds by asking a particularly complicated question: how is it that we often connect with others more easily than our own children/parents?" Michael Tully at Hammer to Nail.

Update, 9/8: Karen Durbin in the NYT on Castaneda's performance.

Posted by dwhudson at September 4, 2008 7:06 AM