Film

FALCON LAKE

Charlotte Le Bon’s striking, stylish, sweetly scary debut movie puts the wittily observed tale of a teenage crush front and center of a ghoul-free horror film, where all that goes bump in the night is an embarrassed kid trying to clean his sheets after a wet dream. Coming-of-age movies are usually, like growing up itself, some combination of funny, sad, rueful, awkward or frightening, but rarely are they so successfully all those things at once as in Falcon Lake.

Fourteen-year-old Bastien (Joseph Engel) and sixteen-year-old Chloé (Sara Montpetit) spend their summer vacation with their families at a lake cabin in Quebec, haunted by a ghost legend. Despite the age gap between them, the two teenagers form a singular bond. Ready to overcome his worst fears to earn a place in Chloé's heart, the holiday becomes a turbulent pivotal moment for the young boy. Falcon Lake is a sensitive look at a pair of teenagers caught between childhood and adulthood, friendship and romance.