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Ever since Thoreau published “Walden” in 1854, the eponymous pond has taken on a life far more metaphysical than geographic, appropriated by writers wanting to give a name to their own special place where life at some point in the past had the potential for time-stopping splendid isolation. In Czech director Bojena Horackova’s “Walden,” a lake in Lithuania named by the characters after Thoreau’s book is but one of many recognizable elements suffusing this low-key memory film, composed like a palimpsest where all influences are detectable.

Episodically constructed with conscious tips of the hat to Jonas Mekas, Eric Rohmer, Ingmar Bergman and Sharunas Bartas, the film has a quiet pull, yet the lack of chemistry between characters plus the piecemeal storytelling leave the viewer in customary admiration of co-dp Agnès Godard’s masterful framing without connecting to their emotions. , both as a teenager in early 1989 Lithuania, just before the collapse of communism,...

Set in Lithuania at the tail end of Communist rule, Bojena Horackova’s “Walden” offers a bittersweet look at a group of youths on two sides of a generational change.

Selected as a part of Cannes’ Acid sidebar and making its world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival, the film follows its withdrawn protagonist Jana across two timelines – both as a 17-year-old who falls in with a roguish crowd as she prepares to go west on a student visa, and then as middle-aged woman who has returned to her native city after spending 30 years in France.

Both narrative strands move forward with the limpid focus of a short story, and both culminate at a secluded lakefront retreat Jana’s rakish teenage boyfriend calls Walden.

“It’s classic structure, showing one character at two different points,” Horackova tells Variety. “But I liked that both took place around the lake… I was...