MOVIES

A bittersweet love letter to Gonzales and to family

Austin filmmaker explores universal themes in 'August Evening.'

By Juan Castillo
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Friday, October 24, 2008

In his debut feature film "August Evening," Austin writer-director Chris Eska lovingly trains the camera on lucid images that don't evoke the rural South Texas experience so much as they own it. Atmosphere is character, too, in this haunting, affecting drama of fragile bonds among undocumented Mexican immigrants and their acculturated children in Texas.

Bathed in the amber light of approaching sunsets, the images unfold deliberately amid the hum of cicadas and linger in the gaps of awkward conversations. Country roads and rolling hills on languid afternoons are recurring ones.

Eska unlocked the mysteries of the back roads long ago. Though he now splits his time between Hollywood and Austin, Eska grew up outside Gonzales, where much of "August Evening" was shot. In high school, he worked on a chicken farm like the one in the film's opening scenes.

"They say that you have your first 30 years of life to prepare for your first film," says the lanky, 32-year-old, who has described "August Evening" as a love letter to Gonzales.

With a Texan crew and cast, Eska shot the movie for less than $40,000 when he was still in his 20s. For the past three years, he says, he has either been making the film or promoting it in cities and film festivals across the globe, sometimes 18 hours a day. Small indie movies rely on self-promotion and word of mouth, and the buzz for "August Evening" has been enough to open the film in a still-growing number of cities across the country. Its run has been extended several weeks in San Antonio, and it's still playing at the Regal Arbor Cinema at Great Hills in Austin.

"August Evening" won the Best Film Award at the 2007 Los Angeles Film Festival and earlier this year captured a Spirit Awards honor for films with production budgets of less than $500,000. First-time actors Pedro Casta?eda of San Antonio, as aging undocumented worker Jaime, and luminous Veronica Loren of McAllen, as his widowed daughter-in-law Lupe, give memorable performances in the lead roles. Casta?eda, whom Eska happened upon when the San Antonian was installing wireless computer networks, gives a "towering, Robert Duvall-style" turn, one reviewer wrote.

"August Evening" was made by an Austin crew that included many of Eska's friends. The cast includes Austin actors Raquel Gavia and Grisel Rodriguez in key roles.

Eska spoke recently with the American-Statesman about his personal motivations for making "August Evening" and the universal themes that run through it.

American-Statesman: Describe "August Evening." What did you set out to do in making this movie?

Chris Eska: First and foremost, it's about the meaning of family. ... I wanted to talk about family emotions that are important to me, and I wanted to put this in the context of a family where it would make sense to have a more traditional structure. In other words, to have multiple generations under the same household where there would be more of a sense of duty between generations.

On another level, I look at the story like it's a metaphor for the estrangement that all children and parents go through as we grow older. We move away, we get different political ideologies and we just plain don't have the time to see each other as much, and I found that an interesting way to get all those emotions out as well. ... Within my family, within any family that's been here more than two or three generations, we all tend to spread out chasing the American dream. In our family, my sister lives in Manhattan and I often live in Los Angeles. We see our parents maybe twice a year if we're lucky...

The father, Jaime, receives more compassion from his widowed daughter-in-law than from his own children. His daughter seems bothered and ashamed to have to deal with her undocumented father. What did you hope to convey in that dynamic?

I've always been interested in the surrogate family because it allows you to think about what family really means when you take blood ties out of the equation. A lot of the times we'll have close friends, family friends or a mentor-type relationship be just as meaningful as something we have with our own relatives.

With the conflict between generations, I wanted to show mutual disappointment. ... And I wanted audiences to identify with all the children and the daughter-in-law (Rodriguez). The character of (acculturated daughter) Alice (Sandra Rios) seems harsh. But that's sort of me, too. I'm just as much her as I am the dutiful son. We all decide we'll be the dutiful daughter, but then we take on our own busy lives. None of us are perfect children.

You have first-time actors in the lead roles. What was your level of direction working with them?

I was very specific. I would tell them how to hold their body, when to look up, when to stop chewing, when to pause in the middle of a line. Once they memorized that, they could start to relax and draw on their own family's experiences to bring out the genuine emotion.

For these roles, it wouldn't have made sense to have famous faces. It would have put the audience at a distance and made it difficult to believe these characters were living these lives.

At the film's opening in Austin, many audience members marveled at the authenticity of the Mexican and Mexican American characters. Yet you're Caucasian and you don't speak Spanish, though you also wrote the screenplay (mostly Spanish, with English subtitles). Some filmgoers seemed surprised. Do you get this a lot?

I don't speak Japanese either. (He chuckles at the reference to his UCLA master's thesis film "Doki-Doki," which he made in Japan and which premiered on PBS.) Yes, even before I made ("August Evening"), people would read the treatment of the screenplay and talk about how it was authentic. Part of that is just where I grew up, just observing the Latino families around me. Part of it is the help I got from the cast and crew, making sure everything was spot on. The majority are Mexican American. ... Ideally, the film is capturing the idea that all families are the same and that regardless of race and ethnicity, you will see things that ring true.

There's a certain amount of empathy in the story for the undocumented workers who gamely struggle to make a living without asking anyone but family for help. Was that by design?

I wasn't making the film to be political. I noted that during my acceptance speech at the Spirit Awards. But if it changes the way we treat immigrants in this country, yeah, that would make me happy.

What's your next project?

I'm going to settle back at my place on Town Lake and Congress Avenue and spend the winter getting my next project going. But I really haven't decided yet. It could be a story with the same emotions and plot set in India or the Texas Mafia on the Texas border ... If it's about the Mafia, it would not be at all what you would expect. There probably wouldn't be any gunfire. It would probably be about a guy on the fringe.

jcastillo@statesman.com; 445-3635