Stranger by the Lake
At a cruising spot near a lake, Franck falls in love with Michael, a handsome and lethally dangerous man. Even though Franck is aware of this, he chooses to follow his passion.
-
- Cast:
- Pierre Deladonchamps , Christophe Paou , Patrick d'Assumçao , Jérôme Chappatte , Mathieu Vervisch , Gilbert Traïna , Emmanuel Daumas
Similar titles
Reviews
Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.
hyped garbage
A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.
The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
A film that should make people, who think there is such a thing as the 'gay community', think again. Stranger by the Lake is more a docudrama than a fiction film, for its setting, feel, action, and atmosphere is ultra-realistic. One hundred per cent filmed outdoors, with a cast which needed no wardrobe, it had the air of a nature documentary in which David Attenborough stumbles across a pair of gay men getting it on in the bushes, but instead of suavely narrating off-screen, being firmly told by the subjects of his voyeurism to go masturbate elsewhere, like the on-looker was. The story line is thrillingly Hitchcockian, complete with a shocking murder scene filmed in one take and from a far distance, but without a happy ending or release. But the real story is one of complete callousness and solipsism of all men involved, who have no regard or respect for the murder victim and blithely carry on as nothing had happened. As the main character said: "Life goes on." Eros and thanatos, sex and death, are closely linked in this film, and not just from the amount of unsafe sex that went on. Having a psychopathic killer who thinks nothing of getting rid of a clinging 'boyfriend' by casually drowning him is one thing, but one that thinks he can get away with multiple murders without any consequences due to the inability and unwillingness of the 'community' present at the lakeside to intervene or co-operate to solve the crimes, is an indictment. No names are known or mentioned until halfway through the movie, a familiar occurrence when you frequent gay cruising places or venues. I always thought how easy it would be for a murder to be committed at such sites without anyone, even witnesses, knowing anyone's name or business. The policeman in the film, incidentally the only person fully clothed, had the unenviable task of piecing it all together, and, even more importantly, he is also the Greek chorus commenting on the aspects of cruising culture that many gay men willfully ignore. Being held a mirror to your own culture can be shockingly revealing.
a crime movie more than a gay one. a psychological drama more than a crime one. a film about the fragility of few men, easy to reduct to nudity or sex scenes. the end is the key to a sentimental triangle who defines each of lead characters. the sexual relation as love, the confessions and the empty state of soul, the forms of solitude and the stereotypes , the cars and the lake, the forest as refuge, each as symbol of forms of isolation and looking of sense in the other. a film who need review. for understand, behind the images, the significance of dialogs, gestures and compromises. portrait of society as a kind of parable.
I didn't dislike the movie. I even admire the lengths the actors went in the explicit sex scenes. But overall I think the director wanted really bad for it to last as long as it did even though the script does not have much to work on. I didn't need that shot of the car parking over and over again for example. I would have liked to know for how long Franck had had a crush on Michel for him to eventually say that he was in love. If we only see them on the cruising spot and obviously Franck had some experience it does not make sense for him to just fall in love with this guy and keep his secret. Why? I could also have used more Henri. Don't get me wrong, I really appreciate that Guiraudie allows the audience to come up with a sad story for him, but we could have had more conversations with Franck. Those talks were the soul of the movie and he obviously deserved that nomination to the Cesar awards. And then...the ending...come on! It's not an artsy film. It did need to provide some closure if the movie is not about people's connections but about the killer out there. At least it was another kind of tale.
The lake in the title is a place where men go to skinny dip or wander off into the woods to have gay sex. Cute young Franck meets tall hunky Michel there and falls for him. Then he sees Michel drown another man. He wants to tell the police but he's in love with Michel and starts having sex with him. Can he ever turn Michel in? This got a lot of controversy when it was released in the US. It has quite a bit of full frontal (and back)male nudity, hardcore gay sex and a lengthy simulated sex scene between the two leads. It was never rated (it would have gotten an NC-17 easily) but no one under 17 was admitted to the cinema. It got raves over here and did fairly good in the art house circuit. It also won Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival. I can't see why. It IS well-directed but Best Director??? Hardly. The film has plenty of male nudity (there's no females in the film at all) and sex but it also moves at a snails pace. I dozed off twice! Even worse the film has no ending. If just sort of stops with no resolution to the conflict. I'm giving if 5 stars for the beautiful cinematography and the two main leads. They're handsome, can act and have great bodies. Also some of the nudity and sex was hot. Still I was more bored than anything else.