A different Mexican postcard: Fernando Eimbcke’s Lake Tahoe (2008)

This article examines the ways in which the screen aesthetics of Fernando Eimbcke’s Lake Tahoe (2008) creates a sympathetic portrait of the contemporary middle class in Mexico. Considering first the deployment in Eimbcke’s work of the same critical closeness and distance underpinning the chronicles of distinguished Mexican writer Carlos Monsiváis, the article then analyses: Eimbcke’s formal style, which foregrounds a combination of static camerawork and narrative ellipsis to produce specific affective relations on-screen and an ironic address to the audience; his chronicle of the Mexican working and middle class in a beach town in the Yucatán; and the implications of the visual humour and nostalgia with which he approaches the protagonist’s process of mourning.