Writer and Director: Tara Thorne
Another BFI Flare premiere, Tara Thorne’s Lakeview is a friendship story about the transition between different stages of life and what relationships can look like beyond the heady rush of your 20s and early 30s. A classic weekend away comedy-drama where inevitable secrets and frustrations are aired, Thorne’s film explores the contrasts between the more sedate emotional needs of its settled, grown-up characters and the unfeasible allure of maintaining more volatile connections. But while Lakeview starts with a strong scenario and plenty of laughs, as the film homes in on a will-they-won’t-they plot line, its cohesion drifts away.
Inviting her best friends to celebrate her recent divorce, Darcy opens up her beautiful lakeside home for a weekend of drinking and relaxing. As the friends arrive, they each come with unexpected news; Lauren brings her much younger lover Phoebe, Julien and Julie Anne announce their pregnancy and Lucy is mourning a dramatic breakup. But they all wait for the mysterious Dax, a musician who has previously slept with all the friends but holds a candle for the host.
Thorne’s film creates a strong bond between the characters and while each of the women are very different, their credible long-term connection is well created even though their lives have all gone in different directions. And there is something reassuring about the ways in which the friends obviously care for one another, pitching up to support Darcy in her post-divorce life and the ease between them in Thorne’s screenplay evokes the many happy, complicated and devastating times they have clearly shared.
For some time in the film the arrival of Dax is much talked about, creating a sense of anticipation that unfortunately is only disappointed by the remaining plot which focuses on several casual sexual encounters and longing that Dax is at the centre of in just a couple of hours. While the speed of this is rather unbelievable, the character is too underwritten to really be worth all of the trouble she seems to be causing, a composite of singing a couple of mournful love songs and a reputation for chaos which seems rather tame when she eventually arrives, never quite fitting as neatly into the rest of the group.
And it makes Lakeview’s eventually payoff a little underwhelming, the friendship story sidelined for this romantic subplot that only offers diminishing returns in the final third of the film because this character is too thinly drawn for the audience to make sense of, particularly in light of her repeated bad behaviour within the group.
Elsewhere, there is a really interesting mix of likeable personalities with the reserved Darcy (Lesley Smith), more poised and aloof than her friends, Lauren (Nicole Steeves) desperate to be loved and willing to accept a low bar, while Kathryn McCormack’s Julien has all the best lines and not enough screen time. Lakeview feels like it misses the boat somewhere along the way so perhaps these friends could reconvene at another of Darcy’s houses for a different weekend and have the fun time they, and we, really wanted.
Lakeview is screening at BFI Flare 2025 from 19-30 March.
