"No matter how accomplished, anthology movies can often be exhausting to watch. For those brief hours in its presence, a film demands total immersion, and switching from one story to another can start to feel like taking a long trip that requires hopping between cars and trains and boats and planes. By the end, all you want is for the ordeal to be over."
"After finding a lost loonlet, Lu and her birdwatching grandparents nurse the baby bird back to health. At nights Lu calls her mom, always getting her voicemail. When she finds the mother loon and berates the older bird for abandoning its baby, Falconer keeps her camera distant, with the dialogue almost inaudible. Knowing that we understand the symbolism of the moment, she lets it pass gently, and her soft touch underlines both the sadness and predictability of Lu's response."
"All the stories in Green Lake function in similarly glancing fashion. In "Summer Camp," Jun (Jim Kaplan), a shy teenage violin prodigy, gets dropped off by his demanding mom at Interlochen Center for the Arts, where he practices until he bleeds; a promising attempt at friendship with some fellow students gets complicated by the fact that they're all trying out for the same spots in the camp orchestra."
Sunfish (& Other Stories on Green Lake) is a Sundance premiere composed of four delicate tales set in the languorous atmosphere of Green Lake. The film favors a dreamlike, unhurried pace while remaining concise and quietly moving. In "Sunfish," 14-year-old Lu stays with her birdwatching grandparents, learns to sail, rescues a lost loonlet, and confronts an absent mother loon; the camera remains distant and dialogue is often barely audible, emphasizing symbolism and restraint. In "Summer Camp," shy violinist Jun practices until he bleeds at Interlochen, and budding friendship is complicated by competitive pressures. Two other brief stories complete the quartet.
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