Charlotte Le Bon is a francophone Canadian actress who introduced herself as an interesting screenwriter and director with this unusual coming-of-age drama. She found inspiration for “Falcon Lake” in the comic strip “Sister” by Bastien Vives, who was also one of the screenwriters, and the focus here is on the soon-to-be-14-year-old boy Bastien (Joseph Engel) and the flirtatious 16-year-old Chloe (Sara Montpetit). When you are in your thirties or forties, two years of difference do not play a role, but in the tender years in which the main characters are, this difference is very noticeable.
And while Chloe, a teenager, is aware of her sexuality and already has some experience with it, Bastien is a kid who will literally eat out of the palm of any girl a few years older as soon as she shows him some attention. Bastien and his family arrived at the lake somewhere in Quebec from France, and they share the cottage with Canadian friends whose daughter is Chloe. Right in the introduction, we learn that the lake they chose for vacation is accompanied by some kind of legend about ghosts, and from the beginning, both the atmosphere and the photography are significantly different than what we would expect from a classic coming-of-age film about youthful romances. It’s as if in this way Le Bon wants to suggest that it can’t end well, although very soon Bastien and Chloe will start to get closer.
The film, produced in Canada and France, had its premiere at the director’s evenings of the Cannes festival, and by the end Chloe will drive young Bastien completely crazy. Despite the age difference and the fact that Chloe is disappointed by her recent break-up with a young man who also vacations on the same lake, the two will become close, with of course the typical youthful antics of that age. We practically don’t see the adults there, except occasionally in the background and they are having fun in their own way, and the children are free to do whatever they want, but the problem is that kids of Bastien’s age can sometimes fall so fatally in love without even realizing that it is actually just the beginning of their maturation and self-discovery. In the end, “Falcon Lake” was a complex and emotional drama seasoned with a slightly gothic atmosphere and an unexpected twist at the end.