Charlotte Le Bon has had an enviable career as an actress in France for ten years. With FalkenseeWith her extremely successful first feature film, the Quebecer proves that she also has a bright future ahead of her as a director.
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Falcon Lake was introduced at the Cannes Film Festival Directors’ Fortnight last May, where it received a warm welcome. Falcon Lake delicately explores the first romantic and sexual feelings of two teenagers, flirting nicely with the weird and the fantastic.
Photo courtesy of Sphere Films
Joseph Engel and Sara Montpetit in a scene from Falcon Lake, Charlotte Le Bon’s first film performance.
We follow the character of Bastien (Joseph Engel), a young 13-year-old Parisian who has been invited with his parents to spend a few weeks with a family of friends from Quebec in a chalet on the edge of a lake during the summer holidays. As soon as he arrives, he befriends the 16-year-old daughter of the hosts, Chloé (Sara Montpetit).
A unique bond and a strange carnal play develops between the two teenagers as they spend days together in nature and the summer heat. This sense of alienation is reinforced by the fact that Chloe is convinced that the lake is haunted by the ghost of a boy who drowned there.
Good mastery
Bringing the graphic novel A Sister by French author Bastien Vivès to the screen, Charlotte Le Bon offers an initiation story that could have been akin to dozens of other films in the genre about youth. However, by incorporating elements of fantasy and horror cinema into her story, she managed to sign a unique work that stands out from the crowd.
Archive photo
Charlotte LeBon
For her first feature film behind the camera, the actress and filmmaker demonstrates a fine command of cinematographic language, creating immersive and harrowing atmospheres, skillfully contrasting the feelings of fear and excitement that inhabit the character of Bastien. She also gets the best out of her two young leading actors, who play with a disarming naturalness. Without a doubt, this first offer from Charlotte Le Bon bodes well for the rest of her directing career.
Falkensee ★★★1⁄2
►A film by Charlotte Lebon
With Joseph Engel, Sara Montpetit and Monia Chokri