Fal­con Lake – first-look review

It’s apt that mul­ti­hy­phen­ate Char­lotte Le Bön – who in her short career has already ticked off mod­el­ling, pre­sent­ing and act­ing – described a 2016 exhi­bi­tion of her illus­tra­tions as ​“the expres­sion of poet­ic iso­la­tion”. This sen­si­bil­i­ty flows through the dreamy and ephemer­al Fal­con Lake, which sees 13-year-old Bastien (Joseph Engel) and 16-year-old Chloe (Sara Mont­petit) embark on a will they-won’t they friend­ship dur­ing one balmy sum­mer in the pic­turesque Lau­ren­tides region of Québec.

Based on the graph­ic nov­el Une Soeur by Bastien Vivès, this adap­ta­tion intro­duces us to Bastien at an awk­ward age: a gan­g­ly pre-teen whose biggest fear in life is to be caught mas­tur­bat­ing by his par­ents. It’s a fear that his new friend Chloe mock­ing­ly acts out to embar­rass him, in what is a believ­ably cheek-red­den­ing moment for a boy on the cusp of sex­u­al maturation.

A cosy aspect ratio locks us into his gaze through­out his hol­i­day, with Chloe’s long, flow­ing hair fill­ing the frame, flanked by rip­pling lakes, ver­dant wood­land and flick­er­ing log fires. As the old­er love inter­est, Mont­petit is par­tic­u­lar­ly like­able in a role that could have eas­i­ly fall­en prey to using the younger suit­or as a play­thing. Instead, their con­nec­tion is read­i­ly believ­able, and only betrayed when Bastien insults her gen­eros­i­ty towards him.

It’s hard to rein­vent the wheel when it comes to either the hol­i­day romance or the com­ing-of-ager, but Le Bön astute­ly val­i­dates how impor­tant and all-con­sum­ing first love can be. It’s an absorb­ing look, too, at the rick­ety bridge between child­hood and adult­hood: when hav­ing a bath or shar­ing a bed with some­one takes on a new mean­ing, or when offer­ing some­one an ice cream when they’re cry­ing becomes just a lit­tle too infan­tile. And it’s also about the star­tling real­i­sa­tion, too, that your child­hood is over. For Bastien, this man­i­fests in the jar­ring sight of a lit­tle fawn on the road­side, neck bro­ken, glassy eyes.

The direc­tor has namechecked Pawlikowski’s My Sum­mer of Love and Call Me by Your Name as influ­ences, but also, intrigu­ing­ly, the psy­cho­log­i­cal thriller Take Shel­ter. A wel­come through­line in Fal­con Lake – which reflects the expiry date on the pair’s sun-dap­pled idyll, as well as intro­duc­ing a hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry lay­er to pro­ceed­ings – is a spec­tral, ghost­ly fig­ure that stalks the periph­ery of the water. Local leg­end has it that a stranger once drowned in the lake, and Bastien takes on this role with glee, child­ish­ly wrap­ping him­self in a white sheet that rein­forces his vir­ginal inno­cence for Chloe’s gid­dy entertainment.

Cam­er­a­work is intu­itive and envelop­ing, while Shi­da Shahabi’s rous­ing score is a stand-out, exter­nal­is­ing the orches­tra of emo­tion housed in these two small bod­ies for us all to feel. Fal­con Lake is effort­less­ly fun­ny and sweet in a way that kids them­selves just are some­times, and yet the low-stakes nar­ra­tive nev­er con­de­scends. In its own qui­et and rumi­na­tive way, it’s a sweet and sharp elu­ci­da­tion of the agony and, well, incon­se­quen­tial­i­ty, of first love.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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