DARK WATERS
Actor Charlotte Le Bon turns director for a haunting holiday romance.
Not all comic-book movies feature spandex and superpowers. Case in point: Falcon Lake, an adaptation of Bastien Vivès’ 2017 French graphic novel A Sister, which tells the story of a 13-year-old boy, Bastien (Joseph Engel), and his summer dalliance with 16-year-old family friend Chloé (Sara Montpetit). ‘I found it obvious that this very sensitive and subtle story had immense cinematic potential,’ says Canadian star Charlotte Le Bon (The Walk, Fresh), making her feature debut as writer and director here. ‘But the most difficult thing in an adaptation is to make it your own.’
Set around the titular Quebec body of water where Le Bon grew up, Falcon Lake is not a typical first-love story. Here, the ghostly spectre of death looms large thanks to Chloé’s morbid fascination with a child who supposedly drowned on the lake. ‘Usually coming-of-age stories are either very cute, or superdramatic, but there’s this part in the middle that can be quite dark,’ says Le Bon, whose father died when she was a child. ‘My teenage years were not especially joyful. I thought that was a very dense and complex thing that I could exploit in a movie.’
The three years between Bastien and Chloé may as well be 30. While innocent Bastien, who pointedly states he’s ‘turning 14’, lives in his own world,
Chloé has been drinking, partying and dating older boys. Le Bon saw herself in both characters. ‘I’ve been in the position where I’m 100% sure that I’m not good enough for somebody, and I don’t know how to react, like Bastien,’ she says. ‘And I’ve also been in [Chloé’s] position where I’m testing limits, and not sure if I’m interested or not.’
Though set in the present day, the film has a hazy, photo-book quality owing to the fact it was shot on 16mm film, in Academy aspect ratio. ‘I was born in 1986, so I was used to printed pictures,’ notes Le Bon, who appreciated the ‘discipline’ that working on film requires. ‘This is a format that is very dear to my heart. This is a very nostalgic movie, and
I wanted to have an aspect ratio that would remind me of that.’
Despite the potentially taboo subject matter, Le Bon claims she ‘didn’t want to do a shocking movie about the sexuality of teenagers’. Far from it, Falcon Lake is funny, tender, surprisingly spooky, and wildly accomplished for a feature debut. ‘I like every step of [the filmmaking process],’ she smiles. ‘This is really what I want to do for the rest of my life. The only step I hate is the financing, where you’re like, “I’m really talented! Please! Do you think I’m talented?”’ After Falcon Lake, there’s no question of that.
‘I didn’t want to do a shocking movie about the sexuality of teenagers’ CHARLOTTE LE BON
FALCON LAKE RELEASES ON DIGITAL ON 24 APRIL.