FALCON LAKE - Mark Reviews Movies

Falcon Lake, Yellow Veil Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 8, 2023

When you're a teenager, everything seems to be the most important thing in the world. That's true of the 13-year-old protagonist of Falcon Lake, who finds his first real crush and more over the course of a summer vacation of indeterminate length. It could be a matter of days or a few months, but if time is relative, that's especially true when it comes to a teen with raging hormones and a lot of insecurity.

Such is certainly the case for Bastien (Joseph Engel), who arrives at a cabin near a lake somewhere in Quebec with his parents and younger brother. The teenager is all set to do not much of anything—swimming and playing video games and watching television—without any responsibilities of which to speak.

Then, he sees Chloé (Sara Montpetit), the 16-year-old daughter of some friends of his parents, sitting in their shared bedroom by the window with the moonlight striking her raven hair. All of those plans are pretty much finished after that.

The film is the directorial debut of actor Charlotte Le Bon, who also wrote the screenplay (in collaboration with François Choquet) based on Bastien Vivès graphic novel A Sister. By way of Kristof Brandl's boxy and somewhat murky cinematography, the first-time filmmaker captures the sense of how these strong, previously unknown emotions create the feeling of a mental prison of sorts. There are so many things to see and do in this place, but once Chloé shows even the slightest interest in Bastien's company, the teen starts finding ways to get closer to her and stares off in the distance whenever she's away from him.

All of this is seen from Bastien's perspective, of course, but Le Bon ensures that Chloé isn't simply some mysterious persona of the teenage boy's attention and affection. Like Bastien, she has an entire inner life of doubt and anxiety, despite her relative confidence compared to our protagonist. In spite of Chloé's distance from the core of Bastien's narrative, a key moment in which we know exactly how she'll react to something he tells a relative stranger proves how well Le Bon develops both of these characters.

Chloé has a morbid way of thinking, too, obsessing over death and drowning in particular—imagining that the lake is haunted by the ghost of a child who couldn't swim. That local myth eventually comes into play, albeit not in the way one might expected from the film's moody atmosphere, but it feels more like a half-considered afterthought here, especially in relation to how detailed the central relationship is beforehand.

Falcon Lake gets right to the heart of the unease of adolescence and first infatuation. It's a time and event of utter confusion and the potential of such previously unknown joy. Le Bon treats the material with thoughtfulness, empathy, and, regardless of how clunky a final turn toward the supernatural may be, a sense of the haunting nature of such a milestone.

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