
Summer’s over, but this anthology is still warm.
Last year, Yorgos Lanthimos made the anthology film “Kinds of Kindness,” which had big names like Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe. This year, Joanna Hogg is an executive producer on “Sunfish (& Other Stories on Green Lake”), which has lesser known actors, but a sweet and relaxing ambiance. Sometimes, we get situations, other times, we get reflections on life, and we end up liking with this film is going.
The time is the summer, and the place, of course, Green Lake, located on the Lower Peninsula of Michigan. And the filmmaker is Sierra Falconer, who uses the anthology genre as a thesis for her studies at the University of California, serves it in the autobiographical sense. She did say it was “Loosely autobiographical,” according to an article in The Park Record.
As I’ve mentioned above, a lot of these people you probably haven’t heard of before, but they have contributed before and they are related to more well known actors. “Sunfish (& Other Stores on Green Lake)” is a nice little introduction to them. As you watch the film without a trailer, you start to feel relaxed by the windy and vibrant look on the Michigan lake, and you want to know who these people are. And we have four stories to tell us that.
In the first segment titled “Sunfish,” we meet young Lu (Maren Heary), whose mother (Lauren Sweetser) gets engaged and leaves her with her grandparents (Adam LeFevre and Marceline Hugot), while she goes on her honeymoon. She discovers her grandfather’s sailboat known as “Sunfish,” and helps a loonlet learn how to swim.
In the next segment “Summer Camp,” a young violinist named Jun (Jim Kaplan from “The Holdovers”) is at an expensive music camp. His mother expects him to be the Principal of the Chicago Sympathy and first chair of the orchestra. And he’s waiting to see what the posted list will have in store for him.
In “Two-Hearted,” we meet Annie (Karsen Liotta, daughter of the late Ray Liotta), a young, single mother, who offers to help a fisherman (Dominic Bogart) catch a whale, even if it involves some illegal activities.
And finally in “Resident Bird,” we meet two sisters Robin (Emily Hall) and Blue Jay (Tenley Kellogg), who both run a bed and breakfast. Blue Jay must take over while Robin is off to culinary school.
I saw “Sunfish (& Other Stories on Green Lake)” virtually from the Sundance Film Festival, and I liked where it was going. It’s a short movie running for less than 90 minutes, but each story is given enough time to introduce us to the characters and show us where they’re going. In her directorial debut, Falconer adds a low key aspect to the characters and how we run into them. I don’t want to spoil how for you, but I would like you to know when you see them.
Not every story is perfect, but some deliver with honesty, especially when young people need to find their purposes in life and how people need some action in their lives. And I’m easily reminded of how my sister used to sail, thanks to the first segment. The still shot, which I used in my article and which the Sundance Film Festival used, really sets the concept up nicely, and it drew me in.
Again, I hate that Summer is over, but “Sunfish (& Other Stories on Green Lake”) has an August spirit to it. And I should know because I do take Maine or Long Island trips in that month. It all depends on where my family wants to take their motorboat to.
In Select Theaters This Friday
Categories: Drama

