Friendship on film in ‘Porcupine Lake’
The St. John’s International Women’s Film Festival schedule is so jam-packed, it’s damn near impossible to take it all in without taking a couple of vacation days from your regular working life.
I managed to squeeze in a couple of festival events this year, catching Jordan Canning’s “Suck It Up” at Cineplex last Wednesday, and Ingrid Veninger’s “Porcupine Lake” at the LSPU Hall on Sunday.
Both films feature strong female leads, who are navigating friendships, relationships, family issues and the complex emotions attached to all of life’s experiences.
While “Suck It Up” featured of-age women battling heavy and dark issues, “Porcupine Lake” is a coming-of-age story starring two young teenage — maybe even tweenage — girls.
As the film begins, we meet Bea (Charlotte Salisbury), who is travelling with her mother to rural Northern Ontario for the summer. Their destination is a small town in which her dad owns a gas bar/restaurant.
As the parents work on their strained relationship, Bea’s mother urges her shy and quiet daughter to make friends, but comes to regret pushing her daughter into socializing when
she befriends a local girl who hails from a vastly different socioeconomic status.
Kate (Lucinda Armstrong Hall) is fierce and brash, with skewed views on friendship and loyalty from idolizing her older brother, Romeo, who is not the best of influences.
Her dysfunctional family has little time for the young girl, so Kate latches onto her new friend immediately, holding on tightly.
Sheltered Bea is not too well versed in friendships, and doesn’t know where the boundaries typically lie, as evidenced
by her willingness to learn about sexuality — starting with kissing and French kissing — from her more precocious friend.
As this scene unfolded, I figured a budding lesbian relationship would become the focus of the film, and was already thinking of ways to write about it without being too explicit in print.
This was simply a subplot, however, as “Porcupine Lake” aimed its focus on the exploration of new friendships, instead of defining its characters by their sexually explorative actions
— though the actions depicted on screen were very PG, and innocent in nature.
An ongoing theme of tender innocence is prevalent throughout Veninger’s film, as the audience spends the summer with Kate and Bea, whose friendship is repeatedly tested by outside forces.
The innocence continues when Kate concocts the idea to move to Toronto with Bea at the end of the summer. Neither understands the magnitude of the idea they are proposing, but in the carefree days of summer, imaginations are allowed to run wild, like the girls themselves.
Swimming, hiking, biking, eating candy and selling crafts by the side of the road, Kate and Bea’s summer experience is relatable in its simplicity, but also relatable in its difficulties, as we follow two young, developing women who are trying to figure out their place in the world.
“Porcupine Lake” shows that some of the best friendships can be formed through an unlikely partnership, and that life is damn fine with a good pal by your side.