Sleepovers are sacred spaces, and by choosing to attend participants agree to an implied confidentiality agreement: what happens at a sleepover stays at a sleepover. Our exclusive clip of writer-director Ingrid Veninger’s “Porcupine Lake” takes place at a sleepover and features the kind of intimate conversation that so often occurs between adolescents at the rite of passage. Secrets are swapped, and silly jokes are made.
“Do you ever think that maybe you’re adopted?” Kate (Lucinda Armstrong Hal) asks her new BFF Bea (Charlotte Salisbury). Bea’s strong family resemblance is enough to convince her that she’s not. “Sometimes I think I am,” Kate says. “Like I don’t really fit with my family.”
“Porcupine Lake” centers on Kate and Bea’s friendship. Bea is “on the edge of growing-up, and isn’t sure she likes what she sees, especially with her parents inching ever closer towards a divorce,” the film’s official synopsis details. “The summer starts out boring and lonely, same as it ever was, until she meets the outspoken and boisterous Kate. A spark, a glance, an introduction, and that purest of experiences — ‘best friend forever’ — happens, with an intensity that concerns all the adults around them.”
The clip suggests that Kate and Bea’s feelings for each other aren’t wholly platonic, which adds another complicated dimension to their relationship.
“It’s a positive and hopeful story about strength and trust and the secret world of girls,” Veninger said of “Porcupine Lake.” “In light of ever-present intolerances and increasing violence, I wanted to make a film that celebrates love and courage and curiosity.”
Veninger recalled, “My mother once told me that she felt her life really began when she met her first best friend, and that resonated with me. It’s a specific and fleeting window of time between childhood and adolescence when we pull away from our parent(s) and venture to form our own identity, and it can be overwhelming because there are so many messages telling us who we are supposed to be. When I sat down to write ‘Porcupine Lake’ I was immediately transported to the whirlwind of being 13. I wanted this story to be a heart-trip and, as we know, the heart is complicated,” she observed.
“He Hates Pigeons,” “The Animal Project,” and “I am a Good Person/I am a Bad Person” are among Veninger’s previous credits. In 2014 she launched the pUNK Films Femmes Lab, an initiative with the goal of having six Canadian women complete six original feature screenplays within six months.
“Porcupine Lake” will make its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.
