(Cannes) Charlotte Le Bon is the only Quebecer to present a shortlisted film at the Cannes Film Festival this year. And his Falcon Lake, a very beautiful introductory, intimate and poetic story, was exceptionally well received at the Directors’ Fortnight.
Posted at 6:00 p.m
Marc Cassivi The press
The 845-seat Théâtre Croisette sold out on Sunday night for the world premiere of the first-ever feature film by the Quebec actress, who has been making a career in France for more than a decade.
His team, which notably includes the young Sara Montpetit and Joseph Engel in the leading roles, has long been applauded by festivalgoers and other viewers of the fortnight, more by the general public than by the film industry, a peculiarity of the parallel sections.
“It’s a kind of consecration to be selected for Cannes! Charlotte Le Bon confided a few hours earlier when I met her on the very chic Terrasse Albane, which sits just above the Théâtre Croisette. The celebrity nightclub overlooking the Bay of Cannes transforms into a meeting and interview venue during the day.
The 35-year-old filmmaker was even happier about this selection when Directors’ Fortnight General Delegate Paolo Moretti chose her film when he didn’t know her at all. Her status as a star in France, given that she was unveiled by the Canal+ channel, would not have influenced her decision.
Falcon Lake, which has no theatrical release date in Quebec, is interested in the sentimental upbringing and first love affairs of a 13-year-old Frenchman (Engel). When Bastien’s family spends a few days vacationing in a lakeside chalet where his Quebec mother (Monia Chokri) grew up with her childhood friend (Karine Gonthier-Hyndman), he falls instantly under the spell of Chloe.
PHOTO HUGO-SÉBASTIEN AUBERT, LA PRESSE ARCHIVE
Monia Chokri and Charlotte Le Bon on the set of Falcon Lake last August
The 16-year-old, who is a bit eccentric and believes in her own ghost stories, is immediately irritated by the boy’s intrusion into her life (they share the same bedroom) but takes a liking to him. Is it a big sister’s affection for a little brother? Chloe hangs out with 18-19 year old boys, drinks, smokes and is fascinated with death. Bastien is particularly intrigued by Chloé.
Produced specifically by French actors and directors Dany Boon and Jalil Lespert, for whom Charlotte Le Bon played in Yves Saint Laurent, Falcon Lake is about first times, petty jealousies and humiliations of the ungrateful age. Charlotte Le Bon’s staging is particularly clean and subtle, with rich shadow plays on faces and silhouettes, special care in the soundtrack, and an enigmatic ending that will be remembered for a long time.
“This is the first film I’ve produced that isn’t mine,” says Jalil Lespert, who I happened to meet at Albane’s. It was Lespert who suggested to her friend that she read the graphic novel A Sister by Bastien Vivès, of which Falcon Lake is a very loose adaptation. The Quebecer appropriated the story and transferred it from the sea in Brittany to a lake in the Laurentians.
“It was also comforting to be shooting in a place I know perfectly, she says, where I grew up as a teenager and where I’ve spent all my summers. There’s a kind of ambivalence in the Quebec landscapes that I really like. In the summer you feel like nature has absorbed all the snow. It’s lush, nature is in full force, just like these teenagers experiencing their first impulses, those first emotions. At the same time, the water of the lakes is black, you cannot see the depths, there is a very small death floating there! I find the lakes more mysterious than the sea.”
At the tranquil lake where his story takes place, in the dense and disturbing forest that surrounds him, the drama is felt at every moment. Filming took place in the aptly named village of Gore in the Lachute region. “The film is a bit dark. I wasn’t expecting that because it was almost like a vacation for me to shoot,” says the young Joseph Engel, who was discovered by Charlotte Le Bon in a Louis Garrel film, The Crusade.
On the other hand, the filmmaker had not seen Sara Montpetit in the lead role of Sébastien Pilote’s Maria Chapdelaine when she was cast as Chloé. The young actress was concerned when she read the graphic novel that inspired the film, mostly because of the “clichéd imagery of women, pretty raw,” she says. “I was reassured reading Charlotte’s script, which is really different from the comics. »
Charlotte Le Bon openly admits that the first drafts of her screenplay were “pretty scientific” and lacked in originality. “I got kicked out by SODEC! It was cruel! She laughs and points to the many notes in the second version of the script that inspired her to create a more unique work.
It’s only when I started to bring in a bit of the weird and the fascination I have for ghosts, for the underworld, for all that melancholy side, between two worlds, that we found with my collaborator François Choquet, who is a co-writer , the identity of the film. I started having fun, having more ideas, and then we got funding from SODEC!
Charlotte LeBon
An ambiguous game of seduction is at the heart of Falcon Lake, which is one of the nominees for the Caméra d’or at the Cannes Film Festival for best first feature film in all sections.
“Bastien has one foot in childhood and one foot in youth, and Chloé has one foot in youth and one foot in adulthood,” says Charlotte Le Bon. They meet at this little crossroads between the two. She has a dominance over him that she doesn’t necessarily have in men older than her. She plays with him, manipulates him a bit, but realizes that he might be funnier and smarter than she thought. »
“Teenagers are cruel,” she adds. All my memories of youth are cruel. I’ve been through so much betrayal. I liked – and I put that into the character myself – that Chloé was at the same time a little scared of the sexual urges of older men looking at her with a gendered look. »
The omnipresent male perspective in cinema inspired the autodidact, who presented her first short film Judith Hôtel as part of the Adami Talents program in Cannes in 2018, to create her first feature film. “I admit that the fact of being an actress and sometimes being confronted with the visions of directors that I didn’t like, experiencing disappointments, even frustrations, maybe gave me that little push to say goodbye for good and the courage to go out there and tell me I could make it »
The actress, who is also a painter, photographer and illustrator, recalls that men in particular have drawn her to the cinema since her debut. “It’s a bit banal to say, but they had a priori, they had stereotyped ideas about femininity. It was important to me that my female figure is not stuck in the female archetypes of dresses or skirts. On the contrary, she is strange, she is dark. I identified a lot more with a character like that. I wrote a character that I would have loved to have played when Sara was her age. »
It was kind of a Québec Sunday in Cannes. In addition to Falcon Lake, actors Théodore Pellerin and Vassili Schneider presented films on the Croisette. The first in the directors’ fortnight in a co-lead role in Lionel Baier’s Continental Drift (whose cinematographer is Josée Deshaies from Quebec). The second in a supporting role of Almond Trees by Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, one of the most inspired films in the official competition so far.