Falcon Lake, a very nice initiatory, intimate and poetic story, is the first feature film by Quebec actress Charlotte Le Bon, who has been working in France for more than a decade. The only Quebec film presented in the official selection last May at the Cannes Film Festival, it received a very enthusiastic reception from the public at the Directors’ Fortnight.
Posted at 7:30 a.m.
Very loose adaptation of the graphic novel A sisterby Bastien Vivès, whom Charlotte Le Bon transposed from the sea in Brittany to a lake in the Laurentians, where she grew up, Falcon Lake is interested in the sentimental education and the first love emotions of Bastien, a 13-year-old Frenchman (Joseph Engel).
When his family comes to spend a few days on vacation in a chalet by the lake where his Quebec mother (Monia Chokri) grew up with her childhood friend (Karine Gonthier-Hyndman), Bastien instantly falls in love with Chloé ( Sarah Montpetit).
The 16-year-old, who is a little eccentric and believes in her own ghost stories, is immediately irritated by the intrusion of this boy into her life (they share the same room), but ends up getting angry. fondness for Bastien. Is it the love-hate relationship of a big sister for a little brother? A platonic affection or a relationship of another nature?
PHOTO PROVIDED BY SPHERE FILMS
Joseph Engel and Sara Montpetit in a scene from Falcon Lake
Chloe usually hangs out with 18-19 year old boys, drinks, smokes and is fascinated by death. Bastien, on the other hand, is especially fascinated by Chloé, who drags him with her to chalet parties and to the lakeside, where we like to tell stories of fear. An ambiguous game of seduction sets in between them. Bastien wants to show Chloé that he’s more mature than she thinks. Chloé plays with Bastien’s sudden interest in her and the influence she has over him.
In this first feature film by Charlotte Le Bon, an apprenticeship story that flirts with the codes of genre cinema, the 36-year-old filmmaker skilfully deals with first times, petty jealousies and the humiliations of an ungrateful age.
Bastien has one foot in childhood and one foot in adolescence. Chloé one foot in adolescence and one foot in adulthood. They find themselves in a convergent and intermediate zone, between two ages, with all the clumsiness, misunderstandings and potential dramas that this implies.
Around the placid lake where the plot is set, in the dense and disturbing forest – the shooting took place in the aptly named village of Gore, in the Laurentians –, we dread the drama at any time.
Charlotte Le Bon manages to create and sustain this tension, thanks to a particularly neat and subtle production, both dark and luminous, made up of splendid plays of shadows on faces and silhouettes. And an anxiety-provoking soundtrack. The end, open and enigmatic, stays in mind for a long time. Like a good ghost story.
Drama
Falcon Lake
Charlotte LeBon
With Sara Montpetit, Monia Chokri, Karine Gonthier-Hyndman and Joseph Enge
1 h 40