The Idea of a Lake

daniel

A film that makes you consider your life perspective, The Idea of a Lake follows the main character through the filling of inner voids as she seeks closure in the case of her missing father. The movie illustrates how perspective can alter memory, and the fluidity of life over a long, continuous timeline.

saitosouta

Sometimes I can't help but think like “I witness a miracle called film.” Although really rare, certainly there are such precious moments in my entire life. I'm indescribably impressed in that delight way with this vividly mysterious, highly personal, beautiful yet hurt-inside film about delicately multi-layered memory & complicated nostalgia. I'm with tears in my eyes all the time during watching this.

Matt Richards

La idea de un lago feels like a deeply personal film about family communication. It plays out quietly with moments of astounding beauty and playful absurdity. Perhaps it's greatest strength is how it successfully negotiates the passage of time with an assured yet nuanced narrative voice. It did still leave me a little underinvested in the mystery however but in the end it doesn't seem to matter. 3 stars

José Neves

Digital. I can't help but think that most of this recent Argentine films hang too much in characters and dramatic situations neglecting the filmic writing, being, with exceptions, banal stories of cosmopolitan angst. This one as mainly a cinematographic and natural landscapes value (the lake, which is not an idea) - see the scene of the children in the woods at night, with a displaced exhibitionist use of light.

Loz Loory

Lovely film with gentle pacing. Great pas de deux scene with car & girl on lake. Mother prefers to live in hopeful denial of her husband's death. Daughter prefers to live without her baby's father, afraid of loving him for fear he'll disappear too. Sweet, supportive relationship between daughter & son. Nighttime hide-and-seek game with searching flashlights is excellent metaphor for country's reign of terror.

Slappy McGee

(2.5 stars) Slow and meditative character story. Not necessarily a strong narrative as it goes nowhere and only mystery remains. But effective acting and amazing visuals. This does feel more like an experimental character study than anything else. Time jumps around and it's jarring at first, but eventually you settle into it. Ultimately it is unsatisfying to me as nothing is gained or lost... it just is.

Scott Dubin

Beautiful cinematography and I like the imagery of the girl swimming with the car. The picture of the girl with the car is what made me watch the movie and the gorgeous locale was great. It's interesting how the movie touches on family tragedy and death from a sideways direction- with the characters mainly functioning as adults and having a pleasant present day life and pleasant memories of the past.

Superfrog

Nicely crafted films with lots of good ideas in the usage of image and scene direction. This is a film about what is missing that rightly leaves a lot of place to imagination and as such works pretty well ( as in it forces you to imagine). Lacks some kind of coherence to really work, and the disjointed chronology does not help in this.