Coming of age films are a mixed bag. They can sit in that place where they ask us to reminisce about our past. 
A shared or collective moment when hormones and heartbreak were intertwined with fun and the feeling of forever. We feel it because its something we have experienced. FALCON LAKE from director Charlotte Le Bon, concentrates this. Bastien (Joseph Engel) is a shy 13-year-old French boy on holiday in Canada. His family are staying at a friend’s lake cottage in Quebec, nestled on the fringe of Falcon Lake, a place of youthful desire and ghostly despair. Bastien meets 16-year-old Chloé (Sara Montpetit). She is a fan of drink, dance and folklore. Believing in a myriad of local legends and tall tales that she tells to Bastien. One that catches his ear is that of a ghost, haunting the nearby lake. The ghost is a betrayed young boy who lost his life after losing his love.
Its not as majestic as some in the critical sphere suggest but FALCON LAKE is a rich dissection of the route to and journey through a psychological stage of life. 
Puberty or in the psychodynamic field, the Genital stage, is a hard fought and often long drawn chapter. Bastien, played with real nuance by Engel, gleans that he is vulnerable, naïve, lonely and emotional stunted by his youth. He also is enamoured with Chloe. She in turn, (played with a confidence that hides her age by Montpetit), appears fragmented, shallow and hollow by the haunting images that she concocts. but like her they are also mesmerising and deeply troubling. Like many also sometimes they are great to be around. With lapses into a younger self. This sense of childlike wonder sees her drift into narratives that are not actual. The teen façade around the boys on the lake, hides her humanity and this fracture of states is what the film draws deeply from. Arriving at a junction where you grow up or grow through trauma. LAKE FALCON is a film that feels from another time. Akin to a character piece on stage or from the era of the method. there is less ego and more actual here. Ultimately the film succeeds in engaging our tension by ending with a style that will haunt us until the future becomes past.
