Falcon Lake
1h 41m
Directed by Charlotte Le Bon • 2022 • France, Canada
Starring Joseph Engel, Sara Montpetit, Monia Chokri
A dreamily unsettling summertime idyll, a moody coming-of-age reverie, and an enigmatic ghost story wrapped into one, the astonishingly assured feature debut from Charlotte Le Bon is a bewitching immersion into the perspective of thirteen-year-old Bastien (Joseph Engel), a teenager in the hormonal throes of puberty who joins his family on their vacation to a Quebec lake house. There, he strikes up a more-than-friendship with the slightly older Chloé (Sara Montpetit), a disaffected, death-fascinated cool girl who introduces him to the rites of drinking, parties, and sex—and to the legend of a spirit who supposedly haunts the lake. Toying poetically with horror conventions, Le Bon conjures a sensitive, eerily atmospheric end-of-innocence tale within a world quivering with menace and mystery.