ORANGE SKIES, BRIGHT HEARTS:
AN ANTHOLOGY OF SUMMER, STRUGGLE,
AND JOY ON GREEN LAKE

I have found the antidote to the world as it exists right now. It’s director/writer Sierra Falconer’s debut film, Sunfish (and Other Stories on Green Lake), a beautiful, gentle, slice-of-life collection of four stories, connected only by the Northern Michigan lake they are set on and the feelings of the characters that arise from living there.

Blue Jay (Tenley Kellogg), Robin (Emily Hall)

In the first story, “Sunfish,” a 14-year-old girl, Lu (Maren Heary) is unexpectedly dropped off at her grandparents’ house after her mother’s impetuous marriage, so the newlyweds can go off and honeymoon. The next, “Summer-Camp,” introduces us to Jun (Jim Kaplan), a young Asian-American violinist with a white Tiger Mom (Bella Shaw), who delivers him to a famous music summer camp, pressuring him to win the competition for first chair/concertmaster with the eventual goal of joining the Chicago Symphony in that capacity. In “Two-Hearted,” single mom and waitress/bartender Annie (Karsen Liotta) joins patron Finn (Dominic Bogart) on his quixotic adventure to catch a mythic giant fish he believes he’s seen in the lake’s waters. Finally, in “Resident-Bird,” two sisters, Blue Jay (Tenley Kellogg) and Robin (Emily Hall), run a guest house, with Blue Jay’s emotions simmering because at the end of summer, Robin will be leaving her behind to attend culinary school.

Transitions flow from one story so seamlessly we don’t realize we’ve left one story until it opens on the next.

Jim Kaplan (back to us) watching others play at music camp

“Sunfish” is the name of a popular brand of personal-sized sailboat that will help liberate Lu over the summer. Opening on a view of the lake through the trees, Pop (Adam LeFevre) and Nan (Marceline Hugot) are relaxing in their Adirondack chairs, with books and binoculars, and Nan hears a “loonlet” — a baby loon; the cry of loons are repeatedly heard throughout this story. Like Lu, it’s been separated from its mother, and finding it stuck in the reeds, Lu catches and takes care of it. Later she will (barely) be heard, standing at a distance on the small wooden pier, yelling at the mother. It took me watching this film twice to actually hear her say, “You’re all she’s got” to the mama loon, exercising her own frustration at being abandoned. Lu blossoms as a sailor and, releasing the little loon back to its family, she takes the boat up to check out the summer camp, where the next story, “Summer-Camp,” begins.

It’s clear that while talented Jun is here with a purpose in mind, whether it’s his own or his mother’s ambition, he must fulfill that mission, no matter the personal cost. He’s very alone, a little envious of the other kids, who manage to fit fun into their practicing regimes. He seems taken with another boy, Enzo (Giovanni Mazza), who makes both practice and fun look easy. It is anything but that for Jun, and when he makes mistakes he punishes himself by piercing his foot with his bow. Rinsing off the blood in the lake’s water, he finally gets a chance to play with the others and we see him smile and laugh for the first time. But as soon as the results of the competition are in, he runs back to see if he’s succeeded. Next he runs out of exuberance, and as a car passes by him on the wooded road, we’re in story 3, “Two-Hearted.”

Tenley Kellogg as Blue Jay, contemplating her sister’s departure

Here single mom Annie drops her child off at her mom’s house and ends up going into work despite a day off. She probably knows Finn as a regular but he’s at the bar, ordering his next drink, and she overhears him talking about the great fish he knows he’s seen and that he wants to catch so that he will have a legacy named after him. There’s a foreshadowing of his condition with his continual cough even as he lights up another cigarette. He needs a vehicle to round up the equipment to catch the fish, and while his friends merely laugh him off, Annie offers to help. As she’s driving, she tells Finn she sees the lake as a black hole that’s impossible to escape from. Their adventure goes awry, comically and then tragically as each of them experience the best and simultaneously worst day of their lives.

Fade into a view of the lake with several boats huddled together and we watch as a truck enters a driveway, running over a newspaper with the headline “Fisherman Disappears,” and now we’re in story 4, “Resident-Bird.” Two females in a hammock crawl out over each other, later shooting hoops, until we enter the kitchen. Different sized prep bowls are being set out by Robin (the older) who teaches the younger Blue Jay how to make an omelette. “Can’t you please stay?” she pleads, while Robin answers, “I’ve already missed orientation.”

Pop (Adam Lefevre) teaching Lu (Maren Heary)
how to steady the Sunfish sailboat

They lay together on a trampoline snarking about their current older guest’s wig, and then prepare the cabin for the next guests to come, a Hollywood couple and their son, who looks sullen as the family sit down with the girls for the dinner Robin prepared. There’s a lot of off-camera fighting between the couple, which the audience overhears alongside the girls. Later relaxing outside, the husband (Jonathan Stoddard) and the bitchy wife (Brooke Butler) gripe about minor things and the husband pooh-poohs the newspaper story about Finn, joking that he should write about it.

Blue Jay (Tenley Kellogg) and Robin (Emily Hall) bouncing on the trampoline

But a connection between the son Henry (Ethan Stoddard) and Blue Jay arises and together they bake cookies in the kitchen. But it won’t postpone the inevitable. The next day, Robin is packing, loading the truck, and leaving for her future as Blue Jay stands alone, bereft, and the camera pulls back until she’s just a small part of the lake’s landscape.

The cinematography by Marcus Patterson is subtle but evocative of lake life, with repeated shots (that don’t feel repetitious) of a hammock, a trampoline, a small wooden pier, a swimming platform, maps used for various reasons, little thematic touches that help focus on the shifts between youth and adulthood and the expanding emotional universe of the characters. The camera pans to view angles of scenes from outside of rooms, doors, windows, cabins, and other sounds and voices — sometimes silent screams — are heard just beyond the viewer’s range, leaving us to fill in the blanks.

Maren Heary as Lu

Along with the subtle images, hats off to editor Chelsi Johnston for the nearly-unnoticeable segues between stories, and the sense of endings and new beginnings that become the thread binding these otherwise unrelated stories.  It’s not melancholic or bittersweet, it’s more wistful, like reminiscing about the summer in your own life that changed everything… and nothing. You’ll leave the theatre with a sense of calm, and at a run time of just 87 minutes, you may wish you didn’t need to bid farewell to the lake and its inhabitants.

photos by Marcus Patterson courtesy of Sundance Institute

Sunfish (& Other Stories on Green Lake)
distributor: The Future of Film Is Female
2025 | 87 minutes | U.S. | English
for more info, visit Sunfish or Instagram

Sarah A. Spitz is an award-winning public radio producer, retired from KCRW, where she also produced arts stories for NPR. She writes features and reviews for various print and online publications.

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