The great frustration with anthology Movies – and the reason I sink a little deeper in my place every time I sit down to look at a new one – is that even the best of them tend to be very uneven, all rarely larger than the sum of some selected parts. Enter: Sierra Falconer’s Light and boring “Sunfish (& other stories on Green Lake)”, a collection of boring rushing vignettes that resist the usual heights and flames in its format by drawing a mild force from the stillness of the water that goes through it.
In fact, the four short sections that form this influencing debut Flöer together so fluid, the camera passes its focus between them as a baton, so it may have been difficult to know where to end and the next one starts if not for the title cards like “Sunfish” Includes for context. There most people anthologies Spotlight each of its stories with a mono focus for an image projector, Falconer’s attention drives with the warm indifference of a roaming sunbeam. Her characters don’t really overlap in any literal respect, but they are so bound by a shared sense of place – and by the emerging insight that they just pass through it – that it feels like they are all nicely interwoven together, especially when fighting to get in touch with each other.
The first of the four stories (“Sunfish”) introduces us to the hermetically sealed world where the rest of film Will take place: A sun-dapped corner of northern Michigan so heavenly that it makes old people want to die there, and young people feel they need to live elsewhere. These energies collide when 14-year-old LU (Maren Heery) is unexpectedly forced to spend an indefinite time on her grandparents Lake House; Her mother has decided to marry her boyfriend, and LU is not invited to the honeymoon. Instead of spending time with her friends at home, she will spend her summer with two smiles.
Not her grandparents (a couple of very retired birds played by Adam Lefevre and Marceline Hugot), but two actual loons – or a mother -loon and her newborn loonlet. Nan and Pop are just as patience with the girl as Falconer is with all her characters, and it is silent to see LU find the strength to take care of herself while projecting her own frustrations on the aquatic bird that seems to abandon her baby. The parallels here are unsubstantial, but Falconer’s sensitive and impressively insured direction smoothes them to something honest, so that even the moments that may seem obvious to us Roil with self -support.
At a certain time, Lu is staring at the rich children over at the interloch Arts Camp, and next time “Sunfish” we cut we follow one of them instead. His name is Jun (Jim Kaplan), he is a violin child, and his mother pushes him to be the first chairman of Chicago Symphony when he is 20. Jun does not carry the remaining obsession easily. On the contrary, he goes from zero to “black swan” in a few short scenes, at least until a volatile moment of social acceptance – even art camps have jocks, it turns out – complicates the question of what he really wants. Wide and signed where “Sunfish” is so accurate, “Summer Camp” is the only stretch of the film when the anthology in everything bears the head. But the implosive nature of the section also strengthens the overall tension in the film as a whole, which is that all these people are silenced in their own stories and in their own grief, but they are all linked to the beaches in the same lake and a shared basis they believe that no one Other can feel.
Still, it is a relief that “Two hearted” raises the efforts a bit, because a single mother named Annie (Karsen Liotta, Ray’s daughter) gets more than she negotiated when she takes an extra shift in Green Lake Bar where she works. One of her intoxicated patronage that night is a man named Finn (Dominic Bogart), and he fears he will be forgotten and decides that he wants to catch that giant fish in the lake -a loch ness monster -sized myth about one thing – hoping that Its corpse can be his legacy. Funny written and lively in the way it unexpectedly cares into a “badland” -Sque caper where this incorrect Twosome is being chased and chases at one time, a foil à deux (have you ever heard that phrase before?) Born in reaction to the “black hole” in Green Lake. Annie is terrified of having stuck in it forever; She says that even her three -year -old daughter is too big for this city. Finn Know That he never comes out, but it is all the more reason for him to do something magical while he is still there.
Falconer gives him that chance before he switches down for the last story in this collection, “Resident Bird”, which is about a couple of sisters named Blue Jay (Tenley Kellogg) and Robin (Emily Hall). Robin is preparing to go to school during the fall, and Blue Jay is struggling to divide her attention between her beloved older siblings and the tweenage son of the pensioner stays in their house. Perhaps the least eventful and most structured of the film’s vignettes, this last chapter helps to bring “Sunfish” the entire circle, as it returns to the transition feeling that defined the section that began with LU being abandoned by its mother.
Bitter -sweet and unclear easily, “Resident Bird” allows Falcon’s debut to wind up with the same even keel as it began. It is the perfect end for an anthology whose stories are not the bricks in the middle of a building as much as they are the ripples on the surface of a lake, shudder alive and then fade down to flatness so gently that it almost feels like nothing had changed – or It would, if not for the fact that we had seen it happen, and had appreciated that the water was never as quiet as it seemed.
Rating: B.
“Sunfish (& other stories at Green Lake)” premiered at 2025 Sundance Film festival. It is currently seeking US distribution.
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