Come On In, the Water’s Fine

Director Charlotte Le Bon’s new film Falcon Lake was inspired by the graphic novel Une sœur (A sister) by Bastien Vivès. Le Bon uses the landscapes she became familiar with in her childhood, the regions of the Laurentides, northwest of Montreal, as the story’s new setting and the result is a rewarding coming-of-age film where latent desires gradually meet. This deeply nuanced film, which recently premiered at Tribeca Film Festival, uses a teenage crush as its baseline, foregoing the shocking fright nights that typically populate a cabin-by-the-lake tale.

That said, the moment you lay your eyes on that cabin, your mind is already expecting the worst. What a fright it is. It’s worn down. There’s no electricity. Who would stay there for a getaway? But 13-year-old Bastien (Joseph Engel) and his French-speaking family must call it home for a spell.

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It’s here where Bastien meets 16-year-old Chloé (Sara Montpetit), the brusque daughter of his mother’s (Monia Chokri) best friend, Louise (Karine Gonthier-Hyndman). Suddenly Bastien and his younger brother (Thomas Laperrière) must share a bedroom with Chloé, whose penchant for staging death scenes and suggesting she sometimes “feels” the presence of ghosts becomes curiously alluring.

No Gore, Plenty of Intrigue

Falcon Lake is director Charlotte Le Bon’s first feature effort. She reportedly wanted to tweak the source material enough so that her main protagonist, Bastien, was challenged in his vacation setting. He speaks French. Most of the other kids around the lake don’t. But there’s something about Chloé he can’t escape. For starters, she’s older. But there’s a bit more there. Actually, there’s a “there” there in Chloé, and Bastien’s curiosity grows. So does Chloé’s. The girl can have her pick of a handful of hunky teens vacationing around the lake, but in Bastien, she finds, at first, an unlikely comrade, and a twin spirit of sorts. Pals they soon become.

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Le Bon, who also wrote the screenplay, takes delight in surprising her audiences with soft frights, all the while suggesting that perhaps something more dreadful is lurking around the corner. What a tease it is — pretty much like a teen crush heading somewhere, or maybe nowhere at all. Something is stirred. In this case, it’s creative juices. One could easily tire of a lingering temptation that seemingly heads nowhere, but there’s something about Le Bon’s writing and directing that keep you invested in how things play out for Bastien and Chloé.

On that note, it’s important to note that the film was shot on 16mm print. The result gives this outing a refreshingly subtle and sometimes surprising aesthetic that digital would not allow. It adds to overall curiosity set into play here. If there’s any “gore” in this film, it’s beneath the surface, where these teens’ emotions slowly come to a boil. Then settle down, then boil again. Ah, youth.

An Inventive Coming-of-Age Story

Yellow Veil Pictures

Nobody will fault you if you find yourself drawing comparisons to Call Me By Your Name here. That outstanding 2017 Oscar-nominated film, which gave us Timothée Chalamet and a pre-scandal Armie Hammer, stood out for its exquisite pacing and the rich emotional underworld it explored in an unlikely romance. Falcon Lake is like that to some degree, and as the film enters its last act, there’s something wonderfully captivating about Bastien and Chloé that you just can’t shake. Joseph Engel and Sara Montpetit are fine young actors. They lose themselves in these roles. We care about what happens to them.

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When Bastien’s slight but significant betrayal of Chloé arrives in the script, you wonder where the story may be headed. What a welcome surprise it is to watch Le Bon moves through these moments, effectively capturing the heartache and vulnerability of teenagers. And surely, audiences will relate to Bastien’s awkwardness in a new situation, especially feeling like the outsider among all the “cool” kids.

The first few minutes of Falcon Lake will undoubtedly grab you. But the last 10 will stun you. Everything from the writing and the ways Le Bon captures these final moments is a work of a masterful pro. It’s hard to believe this is the director’s first feature endeavor. For most of the film you’re watching Bastien and Chloé connect more deeply and if there’s any doubt whether they will continue on that path — or not — the final shot will find you sitting back, jaw dropped. Bravo.

Falcon Lake, from Yellow Veil Pictures, is playing in select theaters.

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