Falcon Lake

It would be interesting to know what pushed the talented Charlotte Le Bon, ex-weather girl on Canal+ and well-known and appreciated actress, to direct this first film. Indeed, after a first short film Judith Hotel (2018), nothing really let us foresee that she was going to go behind the camera to give life to a first film filled with nostalgia about childhood and a natural place far from the big cities in Quebec. After a notable appearance at the Cannes Film Festival, where the film was screened in the Directors' Fortnight selection, it left the Deauville American Film Festival with the Ormano-Valenti Award.

While we could have expected a light comedy inspired by his professional experience in the world of television or film sets, Falcon Lake turns to a chronicle of adolescence with its first love affairs and especially to a tragic drama that will leave the audience surprised and melancholic. We discover Bastien (Joseph Engel) and Chloé (Sarah Monpetit) who are spending a vacation together with their families in a house by the lake. Chloé keeps talking about a legend around this lake and the presence of a child who would have drowned and whose ghost haunts this place. Bastien is secretly in love with Chloé who has just broken up with her boyfriend for personal reasons. Falcon Lake follows the relationship of these two young teenagers and presents us with a restful place where time seems to stand still.

For her first film Charlotte Le Bon has no time to look for simplicity and has taken refuge behind a mainstream comedy to let her overflowing imagination express itself. On the contrary, this film allows her to express her simplicity and sensitivity by delivering a modern ghost story that seems in some ways to follow in the footsteps of David Lowery's A Ghost Story. Adapting the comic strip Une Soeur by Bastien Vivès, Charlotte Le Bon, with the help of her screenwriter François Choquet, paints a portrait of a youth in search of affirmation and recognition. 

Far from being a simple youth romance, Falcon Lake allows us to immerse ourselves in an atmosphere of apparent tranquility. One suspects that Charlotte Le Bon's filming style comes more from those of American films than French ones, and one can doubtless relate it to films like Luca Pawlikowski's Call Me by Your Name (2018). 

The film's finale converges the legend that Chloe tells with a drama that actually happened in this lake and thus leaves the audience with a real question about what they just saw or how the past and the present come together in total darkness. Falcon Lake is a tale of coming of age and the fragility of our lives. 

While many films often prove to be imperfect or even disappointing, Charlotte Le Bon shows a real maturity in her direction and above all has decided to stay only behind the camera and to find the best of each of her actors to give life to a film as original as it is nostalgic of our lost innocence.

Note that this film will be presented at The American French film Festival on October 14th at 4pm at the Truffaut Theater. If you are in Los Angeles we advise you to go and watch it.

Falcon Lake
Directed by Charlotte Le Bon
Produced by David Gauquié, Julien Deris, Sylvain Corbeil, Nancy Grant, Jalil Lespert, Dany Boon & Jean-Luc Ormière 
Written by Charlotte Le Bon, Fraçois Choquet
Based on the graphic novel Une sœur by Bastien Vivès
Starring Joseph Engel, Sara Montpetit, Monia Chokri, Arthur Igual, Karine Gonthier-Hyndman, Anthony Therrien, Pierre-Luc Lafontaine, Thomas Laperrière, Lévi Doré, Jeff Roop
Music by Shida Shahabi
Cinematography : Kristof Brandl
Edited by Julie Léna
Production companies : Cinéfrance Studios, Onzecinq, Metafilms INC
Distributed by Tandem (France)
Release date : December 7 2022 (France)
Running time : 100 minutes

Seen on September 10, 2022 at the Deauville International Center

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