Lake Tahoe is an engaging, slow moving piece that simply follows a young boy who crashes his car in a small town. The small town is his life, showing a broken family unit after the death of his father. It is a lifeless place of nothingness, showing no future for any of the inhabitants.
Being slow moving holds the film back, it needing an injection of pace to keep you involved. The editing didn’t allow any momentum with annoyingly fading to black when things did pick up. This affected the overall pacing for me.

Some scenes were an effort to get through and if the film wasn’t so distinctively composed I would have switched off. The style made me think of the film Wristcutters: A Love Story with its subtly wry humor. The characters needed to be more engaging. They were a plain bore with aspects of dialogue creating awkward minimal exchanges. This is rife in any of the love interest scenes.

Furthermore, there is a severe lack of soundtrack. Such an big opportunity is missed as there is a multitude of music that fits this feature like a tight, leather glove.

Ideally, something else needed to happen within the story and you get the feeling a trick was missed. Maybe peppering more subtle comedy in key areas?

It was tremendous to see the technical elements gel so nicely yet, the story leaves you frustrated to only get to the final outcome. (Its a memory from a Lake Tahoe bumper sticker)

What I will say is that this cinematography is genuine class, allowing a broad colour spectrum to hit you eyes to create a stylishly defined look.

© BRWC 2010.