Falcon Lake

 

Director Charlotte Le Bon

Le Bon with young actor Joseph Engel

The director on the set

Le Bon with Sara Montpetit and Joseph Engel

FALCON LAKE                    B                                                                                                Canada  France  (100 mi)  2022  d: Charlotte Le Bon

If you feel the stories, it’s because they exist.                                                                             —Chloé (Sara Montpetit)

Premiering at Director’s Fortnight at Cannes in 2022, this is ostensibly a ghost story taking place over a summer holiday, where awakened sexual desires give rise to darker impulses, where a shadowy netherworld that feels ethereal and dreamlike seems to follow several of these characters around, but they are the only ones attuned to it.  “You have to be intelligent to find others intelligent,” said French Canadian director Charlotte Le Bon when she appeared at the Toronto Film Festival at the opening screening of her first feature film.  Growing up in Québec before moving to Paris, Le Bon worked as an actress for various French directors while also exploring her passion for art, developing a taste for strangeness through paintings, drawings, and lithographs.  She wrote and directed her first short film JUDITH HOTEL (2018), which invited the strangeness and the dreamlike when it premiered at Cannes.  Co-written by the director with François Choquet, shot by Kristof Brandl on grainy 16mm, with its use of the 4:3 format, a limited amount of time on each reel, and its twilight atmosphere, it evokes the horror genre, recalling the slasher films of cabin-in-the-woods settings, with posters for Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) and Murnau’s NOSFERATU (1922) on a bedroom wall, and an electronic score from Stockholm-based pianist and composer Shida Shahabi creating layers of tension and suspense, accentuating a disconcertingly eerie mood, where the ruminative, atmospherically dense drama subverts the coming-of-age drama with an everpresent sense of dread.  Seen through the brooding eyes of Bastien (Joseph Engel), a shy 13-year old Parisian who is on holiday with his family renting a cabin in rural Quebec, a young boy with delicate sensibilities, he is enthralled with and becomes increasing close to Chloé (Sara Montpetit), the more outgoing and often idiosyncratic 16-year-old daughter of an old friend of his mother, with both families sharing the same cabin.  Like many films shot today, it has a realist aesthetic, where the minimalist narrative is overshadowed by an infused atmospheric tension, almost like a John Carpenter film, recalling Robert David Mitchell’s It Follows (2014), yet more muted and understated, as it unravels in a different direction, defying all expectations, choosing to focus on the developing romance, as we get a feel for Bastien’s growing interest, never veering into male gaze territory.  Parents have a peripheral role and are barely seen, while secondary characters are similarly viewed as inessential, as the entire focus is on the two kids, who apparently have free reign on what they choose to do each day, which includes partying and interacting with older kids in the area, continually exposing Bastien’s naïve vulnerability, while Chloé is more easily drawn into their world.  Nothing is ever spelled out, as things seemingly happen spontaneously, where it’s clear Bastien is often in over his head, nicknamed Houdini by the older boys due to his disappearing act, vanishing without a word, but he plays along, mostly as a passively interested observer who tries to act with confidence, yet he’s drawn into something he doesn’t really understand.  Chloé’s free and easy manner is like a siren’s song, offering a sexual allure that he can’t help but be mesmerized by, but she also disappears at the drop of a hat, only to return home late at night, often disheveled or inebriated, with Bastien, along with his five-year-old brother Titi (Thomas Laperriere), surprisingly sharing her bedroom, so she’s on his mind 24-hours per day.       

The gist of the film is an alternatingly sunny or rainy and stormy summer retreat, far away from the conventions of the world, literally inhabiting an isolated lake tucked beneath the natural surroundings of old-growth forests, mostly shot in and around Gore, Québec, which is part of the mountainous Laurentides region.  According to Chloé, the lake is haunted, suggesting it’s part of the mythology of the region, something the older kids joke about and make mocking reference to, as most ignore that kind of stuff as mere talk, never really taking it seriously.  Bastien’s connection to Chloé lures him into this superstition, as it’s something she talks about frequently, a fan of folklore and local legends, believing the ghost of a drowned child is haunting the lake.  Accordingly, the opening image feels haunted, as we’re seeing what appears to be a dead body face-down in a lake, with the movie title appearing on the screen in Gothic lettering, but then just as mysteriously the body comes alive, bursting with life and movement, challenging our expectations, yet that ominous omen sticks with viewers throughout the entire film, becoming a melancholic reflection on death, with recurring images of dead trees, making us question the façade of summer bliss.  Adapted from the graphic novel Une Soeur by Bastien Vivès, the slowly developing, symbolically charged film is moody and subtly layered, never in a hurry to get anywhere, building a sensuous mood of intoxication through aroused teenage curiosity, becoming a character study that hints at something lurking underneath, mostly told through the power of suggestion, evocative of a tone poem, perfectly capturing the haunting nature of adolescence and young love, a time of awkwardness, hope, and exploration, with hormones racing through your body, where you are left with an alienated sense of unease, as lyrical passages build to sustain a mood, The Beauty Of Falcon Lake YouTube (3:29).  While there are feelings expressed about being left alone or not belonging anywhere, with feelings of strangeness and solitude, the two have an unusual chemistry, most all of it unspoken, where there’s a coming-of-age aspect of immediate attraction, as she invites him into her bad and even shares a bath, with no signs of vulgarity, yet there are also banal moments of tedium, mostly provided by the adults, as it’s clear the wonders of teenage life exists in a parallel space with a completely different intensity level.  Much of this is shot at night, with the characters becoming nocturnal shadows alone in the dark, dreamlike reflections of our inner soul, with supernatural undertones, where the hushed music accentuates the restlessness of youth, broken down into the fleeting moments of new experiences, beautifully captured in this brief moment when two shadows merge into one, A scene from Falcon Lake (2022) YouTube (42 seconds).  This film is not built through dialogue, but in short, fragmented conversations, accentuating small, near indecipherable moments held by the camera, as emotional cues are gleaned through silences, facial expressions, and subtle glances between characters.  Despite playing the festival circuit, this film has barely been seen around the world, with next to no promotion and little fanfare, given an extremely limited release.      

At least initially, Bastien has no interest in being there, feeling more like he’s being dragged along by his parents, spending much of his time wearing headphones, an easy escape from reality.  Chloé pretty much ignores him at first, more drawn to hanging out with the older kids, but they also disappoint, feeling more like immature, sex-craved boys, where their behavior is utterly predictable, as all they care about is drinking, drugs, parties, and opportunities for sex.  Perhaps seeing a part of herself in Bastien, as he’s mostly aloof and standoffish, feeling anxiety from peer pressure, a place she often finds herself as well, routinely discovering that she never fits in, that she’s somehow different, causing her to stand apart.  But from what we can see, that’s to her credit, as these older boys are a dime a dozen with zero personality, where you can find them pretty much anywhere, so spending time with Bastien allows them both to explore undiscovered waters.  At least initially, she takes him under her wing, drinking stolen alcohol for probably the first time, and the results are what you might expect, but their rebelliousness brings them closer together, quickly establishing some trust.  She invites him to tag along at a party, using him as a safety net with older friends, which allows her to defy expectations with no repercussions.  She’s fascinated by the macabre, filling his head with ghost stories, Exclusive Clip - The Ghost of Falcon Lake YouTube (1:56), which allows them to stage a fake death, while they also play at scaring each other by disguising themselves as ghosts, wearing a simple white sheet, which becomes part of their normal routine.  None of this feels particularly spooky or foreboding, but is more in line with kid behavior.  It’s the musical soundtrack, however, and the way it is filmed that reminds us of the darker implications.  This feels like a unique way to express teenage anxieties, cloaked in an underlying interest in morbidity, where the spectral world of ghosts channels their inner thoughts.  Her mother thinks she’s only seeking attention, while a boy she likes calls her childish, suggesting she likes to embellish the truth, calling into question what she’s really like and who she really is, but Bastien is the real conveyor of teenage angst, as without Chloé, he has pretty much nobody, leaving him alone on an island, where she is his sole lifeline, while she’s able to find a circle of friends, even if she detests them much of the time, viewing her as an object of conquest rather than demonstrating any romantic inclinations.  With Bastien it’s different, as she’s calling the shots, where at least in her eyes, he’s a safe alternative to the boorish advances of the older boys.  For him, it feels like she literally fell into his lap, like an apparition consuming him day and night, and he’s uncomfortable sharing her with others, as he’d prefer to have her all for himself, but in that regard he often finds himself as the odd man out.  In the end, there’s a weird twist that may catch some offguard, like a shock to the system, with the lake bordering upon the real and the fantastic, where the power of suggestion looms large, but the artful ambiguity gets right to the heart of the matter, even as nothing is ever explained.  It’s a poetic touch that caps off a multilayered challenge to the senses, feeling like something audacious and authentic at the same time.  Winner of the Best New Director’s award at the 2022 Chicago Film Festival, “Charlotte Le Bon’s film respects the point of view of the protagonist without condescension, conveying the youthful maturity of the characters with energy and poise.  Featuring unexpected moments of humor and repose, this warm coming of age story offers keen observations about the complexity of emotions that come with adulthood.”

Summer with Monika (Sommaren med Monika)

Director Ingmar Bergman on the set

SUMMER WITH MONIKA (Sommaren med Monika)                   A-                   

aka:  Monika

Sweden  (96 mi)  1953  d:  Ingmar Bergman

Why do some people have all the luck while others are miserable?

―Monika (Harriet Andersson)

A perceptive working class dream and nightmare, all turned into one, offering a brief summer romance, as two young teenage lovers escape a claustrophobic world closing in on them and simply run away into the freedom of the open sea, set against a gritty depiction of the bleakness of city life, arguably the only Bergman film that examines working class life, though Sawdust and Tinsel (Gycklarnas afton) (1953) made later that same year explores a more primitive variation, making this of unique interest in his overall body of work, creating a kind of contemplative cinema, with Stockholm viewed as a city by the sea shrouded in the gloom of a morning mist.  The film introduces us to Harriet Andersson as 17-year old Monika, the free-spirited girl of every boy’s dreams, as she exudes eroticism and sexuality, becoming a liberated spirit that simply defies all earthly boundaries, a true revelation in an era of strict prudish conservatism.  Discovered as a young variety show entertainer who Bergman claimed “radiated more uninhibited erotic charm” than any other Swedish film actress, with the director developing a personal relationship with his young star (leaving his wife and children for her), as he would later with Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann.  Swedish films are forever associated with a liberated view towards sexuality, partially based upon this film, with its brief exposed nudity, and Arne Mattsson’s ONE SUMMER OF HAPPINESS (1951) which did the same, becoming something of an international sensation, perhaps culminating with I AM CURIOUS YELLOW (1967) by Vilgot Sjöman (initially banned in the United States) who curiously made an earlier 5-part television documentary entitled INGMAR BERGMAN MAKES A MOVIE (1963), going behind-the-scenes while Bergman was shooting Winter Light (Nattvardsgästerna) (1963), the middle film in his Faith Trilogy.  Just hearing about the nudity, American exploitation producer Kroger Babb purchased the rights to the film for $10,000 sight unseen in 1955, reducing it to 62 minutes, dubbing it into English, adding a jazzy soundtrack, while making sex and nudity the centerpiece of the film, renaming it Monika, the Story of a Bad Girl, (More with Monika! | The Scene of Screen 13), playing across the country in drive-ins and arthouse theaters.  Despite this seamy aside, it received little fanfare when it was first released, never thought of as anything exceptional until French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard and his Cahiers brethren started singing the praises of the film, with Godard writing, “Only Bergman can film men as they are loved but hated by women, and women as they are hated but loved by men.”  Truffaut in The 400 Blows (Les quatre cents coups) (1959) includes a scene of Antoine Doinel (labeled a juvenile bad boy) and his friend stealing a suggestive publicity photo of Monika from outside a Parisian theater.  Today it remains the most widely seen Bergman film in the United States.  Certainly in the early 50’s, no one had seen a movie like this before, much less exported it, perhaps best expressed by the fond recollections of a young and impressionable Woody Allen:      

Less than ennobling was the motive for seeing my first Ingmar Bergman movie.  The facts were these: I was a teenager living in Brooklyn, and word had got around that there was a Swedish film coming to our local foreign film house in which a young woman swam completely naked.  Rarely have I slept overnight on the curb to be the first in line for a movie, but when Summer with Monika opened at the Jewel in Flatbush, a young boy with red hair and black-rimmed glasses could be seen clubbing senior citizens to the floor in order to insure the choicest, unobstructed seat.

I never knew who directed the film nor did I care, nor was I sensitive at that age to the power of the work itself – the irony, the tensions, the German Expressionist style with its poetic black-and-white photography and its erotic sado-masochistic undertones.  I came away reliving only the moment Harriet Andersson disrobed, and although it was my first exposure to the director who I would come to believe was pound for pound the best of all filmmakers, I did not know it then.

Viewed as a follow-up to SUMMER INTERLUDE (1951), which according to Marie Nyreröd’s documentary BERGMAN ISLAND (2004), is the first film where Bergman felt comfortable as a director with the rhythms and musical nuances of filmmaking.  Adapting Per Anders Fogelström’s 1951 novel, the film opens as a shadowy tribute to the city of Stockholm, with a documentary-style look of Italian neo-realism as the camera pans the bridges, boat docks, and many canals, viewed as a city that never sleeps, where the rush of morning workers setting off for their jobs replace the drunken night owls stumbling down the streets.  Lars Ekborg is seen as 19-year old Harry, driving his rickety pushcart through the bustling city streets, delivering boxes of glassware from Forsberg’s, while Monika is introduced catching a glimpse of herself in the front door mirror before staring work in a vegetable market.  While superiors are constantly belittling Harry, believing they have to browbeat him into being the worker they desire, subjecting him to an onslaught of criticism, men are constantly lifting up Monika’s skirt or lecherously pinching her behind, as if this comes with the territory, taking full advantage of the situation, at her expense.  Both lead miserable home lives, with an uneducated Monika sleeping in the living room of her large family, with an abusive alcoholic father and a nagging mother, driven out of her mind by the constant interruptions from the noise of the “little brats” who have free reign of the place, while Harry’s mother died when he was young, raised in middle class respectability by an elderly father who can be feeble-minded, spending most of his time alone.  Meeting accidentally at a corner bar, the more reserved and passive Harry is fascinated by her excitable candor, watching a tearful love story together later that night at the movies, where immediately they see exactly what they want in each other, blinded by their own youthful exuberance.  “Let’s go away and never come back,” she proposes, where he’s startled to believe she actually means it just seconds after meeting her, happy to have a girlfriend, like “everybody else,” while she infers that his shy, polite manner makes him a soft-spoken romantic hero, both dreaming of a summer romance together with their one “true love.”  While it’s a bit of a fairy tale romance, the film is otherwise grounded in a lower class perspective, where dreams quickly vanish by the dreary reality that awaits them.  But in a mad rush of youthful excitement, they heed their initial instincts by plunging headfirst into a steamy affair, running away from all the problems at home, taking his father’s boat (with sleeping quarters) out into the remote and mostly uninhabited islands of the Stockholm archipelago, spending an idyllic summer far removed from the pressures of the real world.  But for them, as long as they have each other, that’s all that matters, decades later spawning the young adolescent kids from Wes Anderson’s 2012 Top Ten Films of the Year: #3 Moonrise Kingdom, a first love teen romance given a strangely magisterial beauty all its own.

A bittersweet study of a doomed love affair, given an impressionistic brush, showing greater use of camera angles and range, hopping from island to island, becoming a naturalistic documentary of a sensual awakening, creating a Edenesque beauty charged with sexual power, in particular Andersson’s stunning breakout performance, edging more towards an all-or-nothing, completely uninhibited freedom, where nature is an escape from the restricted confinement of the dreary working class doldrums of the city, becoming utterly liberating, where Monika goes topless and even runs completely nude across the rocks towards the edge of the sea, splashing herself in tidepools, an almost mythical experience that in the early 50’s must have taken viewers’ collective breath away.  (Incidentally, according to film historian Adrian Martin Summer with Monika - Adrian Martin, the latest film restorations eliminate a single shot of Monika lying down baring her chest, which was included in the original theatrical version, but didn’t make it into Criterion’s restoration).  It’s a potent illustration of femininity that doesn’t age, a perfect expression of youthful exuberance, where at the time neither one had a care in the world.  Lost in this dreamy landscape, summer feels like it will never end, but Monika announces she’s pregnant, with Harry thrilled, thinking he immediately needs to return home and get a better job to support her.  In celebration they’re dancing along the shoreline to a portable record-player while a disgruntled nearby camper burns their clothes and sends their provisions overboard, ending up in fisticuffs, with Monika banging this intruder over the head with a frying pan, eventually driving him away, like a pestering nuisance, but their food supply is gone.  She has no interest in going back, but their appearance changes, no longer the picture of the innocent beauty of youth, with hair unwashed and unkempt, clothes filthy and worn out, becoming more and more grumpy and desperate over time.  When they decide to raid an orchard seen nearby, Monika gets caught and promptly marched into their immense island home, where it may as well be another planet.  The immaculate furnishings and abundance of food suggests this is the wealthy class, immediately calling the police, but also politely offering her some food, which she disdainfully rejects.  It’s a telling sequence, as she’s only viewed as a criminal, representative of her lower class, where it’s really this distinction that makes her a criminal in their eyes.  Having no other options, she steals a roast sitting on the table and runs away, like a thief in the night, cowering in the weeds afterwards, reduced to animalistic survival instincts, with Bergman providing spider imagery of insects getting caught in a web, matching her predicament.  By the time she reunites with Harry, they escape back into the open freedom of the sea, but she suffers a narrow escape, a sign of feeling caged-in that will follow her long afterwards.          

         

Retreating back to the safety of the city, the German Expressionist cinematography from Gunnar Fischer is everpresent, revealing a darkly shadowed world that is in utter contrast with the sunny paradise where they’ve been, never more impersonal, foreshadowing signs of what’s to come.  Cutting almost immediately to a hasty marriage and the hospital, Monika delivers a healthy baby girl, but is trapped once again by an unbearably dull life afterwards, stuck in a cramped room with drab furnishings, showing no maternal instincts, yet having to spend all day alone with the baby while Harry is at work, then spending evenings at night classes, thinking this is helping his family, but it places enormous pressure on her shoulders, which she takes out on Harry, becoming a constant nag, just like her mother, literally smothering him from the moment he walks in the door.  Her caged ferocity is an entirely new element introduced by Bergman, as Andersson, never more striking than she is here, brings a whole new range of possibilities to his work, displaying a free range of emotions where she literally inhabits the utter suffocation of an imprisoned character onscreen.  While Harry tries to be reasonable and do the right thing, as he’s the one comforting the baby at night, singing little songs, Monika is on a downward spiraling rampage, buying a new outfit instead of paying the rent, leaving them in a precarious position, becoming a slowly disintegrating ode to the death of love, as the shattering intrusion into their lives is life itself, which can become unbearable.  The Hollywood marriage that she imagined for herself with all the glamor was simply not to be on so little income.  When Harry goes out of town for a few days on a special assignment, Monika enjoys the night life, returning to bars and music halls, picking up men, with her once defiant face turning to the camera for a confrontational lingering pause, staring straight us with a haunting look, as if asking viewers to think before passing judgment upon her, “This is the saddest shot in the history of cinema,” wrote a young Godard in his 1958 review.  It’s a searingly intense moment, one fraught with dramatic ramifications, but it’s an extremely innovative device, as it only adds to Monika’s legendary infamy, refusing to compromise even an inch.  The same can be said for the way Bergman films these final scenes, as there’s not an ounce of sentimentality.  When Harry returns home sooner than expected, he’s surprised to find Monika with another man, all but crumbling any last hopes of sustaining their relationship, which quickly becomes unraveled and forgotten as she disappears out the door, while Harry is left with the consequences, which includes a divorce, a baby in his arms (ironically looking into that same mirror as Monika does opening the film), and a return back to the home of his father (just like his father, he is a single parent), where the child is welcomed into an all but uncertain future.  Monika meanwhile remains an elusive and unseen force at the end, completely out of the picture, like a distant memory, almost like a mythical spirit, where a mother abandoning a baby was especially then considered scandalous, leaving her morally condemned, yet her fickle character is so well developed that she still manages to maintain viewer sympathy, as her all-but-certain economic reality placed her in a box with no hope for a better future, with escape her only outlet from the drudgery of daily life, yet acrimony is not likely to represent Harry’s feelings, more bittersweet, pained and damaged to be sure, yet also grateful for at least one idyllic summer together with Monika.