Falcon Lake: Coming-of-Age in the Woods Tale Wraps a Relationship in a Horror Movie Mood

By Jim Slotek

Rating: B-plus

One of the oddities of time is that a three-year age gap between young people is a chasm that practically disappears as people age.

While not actually being a horror movie per se, Charlotte Le Bon’s quirky Quebec cottage-life drama Falcon Lake maintains a foreboding horror movie esthetic (one that almost comes automatically with the woodsy territory, given everything from Friday the 13th to The Evil Dead to The Blair Witch Project).

Joseph Engel and Sara Montpetit share a bed to talk in Falcon Lake.

Le Bon’s feature debut (based on a graphic novel) is, in fact, a finely-crafted, believable teen relationship tale between a maturing, mordantly obsessed 16-year-old girl named Chloé (Sara Montpetit) and her “almost 14” roommate-by-circumstance Bastien (Joseph Engel).

The circumstances are that Bastien’s family is sharing the cottage of a friend (Karine Gonthier-Hyndman) and her daughter. The “kids” – Chloe, Bastien and Bastien’s little brother Titi (Thomas Laperriere) - must share a room.

As social walls break down (Chloe is rude to Bastien at first), the close quarters of a pubescent and post-pubescent teen charges their relationship. Whether she understands the effect on him or not, Chloe at one point insists he share her bed at night, the better to whisper as they talk and not wake anybody up.

While not exactly a goth, Chloe is death-obsessed (as the movie opens, we see what appears to be a body in the lake, which turns out to be Chloe practicing drowning). She is convinced (or maybe made up the tale) that there is the ghost of a drowning victim that haunts Falcon Lake. For effect, she occasionally dresses up in a ghostly sheet.

For his part, while he’s well behind her in sexual maturity, Bastien has an easy rapport with Chloe, accepting her stories and challenges with bemusement and quiet acceptance that barely hides his obvious longing.

That rapport soon makes Bastien a preferred companion for Chloe, who’s had her fill of the local boys who make up stories about her having had sex with them. The young men are still there, and still interested. And Chloe insists on Bastien being accepted to the goings-on (hence, at least one drunk-vomit scene that becomes quite touching).

It’s an interesting mix, seemingly non-stop partying among teens in the woods, some of whom speak English-only, some French-only and some both.

The night scenes and dark cinematography (along with almost meta scenes of teens in the water, giddily pretending to be attacked by the ghost), suggests repeatedly that something bad is going to happen. And eventually, inevitably, it does. But at that point, it is almost an afterthought to the richness of a young relationship we’ve watched shakily rise and fall.

Le Bon self-assuredly strikes a mood in Falcon Lake, one that she maintains throughout. There is not a false note in the movie, as both Montpetit and Engel create characters that mesh believably.

It’s a debut the director can be proud of.

Falcon Lake. Directed by Charlotte Le Bon from the graphic novel by Bastien Vivès. Starring Joseph Engel, Sara Montpetit and Thomas Laperrière. Opens in theatres in Montreal (and other Quebec cities), Toronto and St. Catharines, Fri., Oct. 14.