The expectations and disappointments of love in the summer vacation, with a supernatural texture
Summers are a really special period when you are a child or teenager, where nothing matters more than what is going to arise that day and everything seems pregnant with an atmosphere that was not really magical, but a fantasy where anything could happen. Meeting friends with whom you only coincide during those months, exploring impossible but sinister legends that you only partially believe, discover new sensations.
It is that period where any minimal intervention or change of plans by your parents is the biggest inconvenience in the world. Especially if they force you to spend this special period in the company of their adult friends who neither leave nor come to you. Likewise it is a period that you want to try to capture with both handssomething that is reflected in the unique ‘Falcon Lake’.
Next to the lake
One of last year’s little gems, which was the directorial debut of actress Charlotte Le Bon, which tries to address in a special way teenage vacations and all their tribulations from a flirtation with ghostly cinema. Without confirming supernatural aspects, the film is an interesting discovery that went unnoticed in theaters, but can now be rescued in streaming through Filmin, where it makes its premiere.
In it we follow the story of Bastien, a French teenager who is going to spend the vacation period with his parents in a cabin next to a lake in Quebec, in the company of a family of friends. There he will meet Chloé, with whom he has an age difference but with whom he also falls in love. He will try to take advantage of this period to get closer to her, while stories emerge in the area about a ghost in the lake.
Le Bon knows how to use spectral atmospheres to give texture to the film, using that characteristic 16mm photography to do so, but it never does so with the aim of disturbing or generating fear. It is an element to prepare the viewer for a story that is going to evolve into a terrain that may be surprising, but above all inevitable.
‘Falcon Lake’: summer of discoveries
It’s a fascinating way to shed another light on the cinema of teenage discovery, which is what ‘Falcon Lake’ aspires to. It also explores romantic elements very typical of European auteur cinema, managing with a very special closeness to his characters. Through this proximity, she leaves a feeling of discovering discoveries at the same time as his characters.
But at the same time we are constantly hand in hand with the person telling us the story (both the director and the character of Bastian), allowing an emotional journey that is genuine in its ups and downs. The expectations, the disappointments, the shocks of maturity are produced with great care in ‘Falcon Lake’, carefully forging an elusive but fresh film like a youthful summer.
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