By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 2.75
Director: Alain Guiraudie
Starring: Christophe Paou | Jean-Christophe Deladonchamps | Jérôme Chappatte | Patrick d'Assumçao
Original language title: L'inconnu du lac
Country: france
Year: 2014
Running time: 100
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2852458/combined
Kyle says: “New York Film Festival Selection Committee member Dennis Lim tells the audience: ‘I’ve been waiting to see this on a big screen ever since the Cannes Film Festival!’ His words promise size as well as artiness. The program booklet uses italics to announce: ‘Please be advised that this film has scenes of a sexually explicit nature.’ These same program notes contain the most fatuous statement I’ve encountered so far in the booklet: ‘Here (Guiraudie) captures naked bodies and hardcore sex with the same
matter-of-fact sensuousness that he brings to ripples on the water and the fading light of dusk.’
”This is a silly stupid waste of time, unworthy of both the audience and the NYFF. Its claim to being a ‘Hitchcockian thriller’ are ludicrous, easily demonstrated with a quick listing of the titles from ROPE (1948) on. The sensuousness of nature is accomplished much more artfully in winds blowing through trees and leaves rustling in Michelangelo Antonioni’s BLOW-UP (1966), which can be cited as an influence on this film without either the sensuousness or the implicit threat of nature’s beauty concealing man’s malfeasance. The characters are ciphers without offering even the challenge of our using them as palimpsests for our own scribblings. The politics are boringly retrograde, returning us to the noxious days of equivalency between homosexual sex and death, between gay cruising and resulting deserved punishment.
“As for its much-vaunted depiction of hardcore sex, the Aesthetic Police should make arrests. If it’s mainstream you’re after, both directors Catherine Breillat and Michael Winterbottom offer vastly superior hardcore sex; if it’s gay you’re after, Bel Ami in Bratislava offers much better from directors Georges Duroy and Marty Stevens, not to mention their star performers who transition admirably from in front to behind the camera, such as Lukas Ridgeston and Sebastian Bonnet. Other directors who do much better hardcore gay sex on film and video include Kristen Bjorn, Max Lincoln, Vlado Iresch, Michael Lucas, and Chi Chi La Rue. Of the twenty screenings I have attended so far in the NYFF 51, this is the only one about which I would quote the late Arthur Bell’s memorable advice in ‘The Village Voice’ many years ago: ‘Miss it with someone you love.’ 1 cat (for demonstrating incontrovertibly that lots of naked bodies lying about are just as boring as you always suspected they might be at those secluded European nude beaches and cruising spots).
“Seen Monday, September 30, 2013, New York Film Festival at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, New York.”
Peter says: “What a strange film! It’s gotten highly positive reviews with a 97% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. However, I found it belabored and repetitive with long yawnful scenes to develop and transition the mood from lust to fear. Shades of Hitchcock according to reviewers? Perhaps, if you want there to be.
“The main character, Franck, knowingly has hot sex with a serial killer at the gay beach where he and other men frequent. Fear and risk of being murdered eroticize him, and he gets increasingly turned on by Michel after he watches him drown his boy friend early on in the film. Nobody cares that the dead boy friend’s car never leaves the parking lot and his towel and clothes remain where they are on the sand day after day. We learn nothing about these characters other than from what we observe them doing with each other at the beach or in the woods above it. We watch them park their cars every morning, then swim and cruise. A third character, Henri, is somewhat enigmatic in that he does none of this, only sits in the same spot on the sand every day, never removing his clothes. He was the only character I could empathize with. The ambiguous ending may dissatisfy many viewers, but I found it quite appropriate for the tone of the film.
“STRANGER BY THE LAKE has full frontal male nudity throughout as well as several graphic scenes of hard core pornography, so don’t bring the family along. Since the men were in very good shape and certainly athletic, I’ll give this Stranger 2 cats”
Kyle responds: “Having thought I had nothing left to say about STRANGER BY THE LAKE, which I wrote about for Chlotrudis last October 6 after a New York Film Festival screening, I find myself inspired by Peter’s post to warn prospective viewers impressed by the director’s reputation and awards, uninterested in the NYFF’s widely publicized warning about all the hardcore sex, and unmoved by fatuous comparisons to the works of Alfred Hitchcock: don’t bother. Even the ejaculation is an insert, and anyone who doesn’t know far in advance where the story is heading has not seen anything Hitchcock directed from ROPE on. Having been a NYFF subscriber for 22 years, I noticed long ago that the most entertaining conversations were to be had in the bathrooms among disgusted audience members. At the 2012 NYFF, contempt for LEVIATHAN inspired commentary much more illuminating than anything from the print critics. So it was for STRANGER, with at least one classic comment I wish I had written down about what Hitchcock could have accomplished with gay porn in French.”
Bruce says: “***SPOILERS***
“Most of Alain Guiraudie’s films depict homosexuality as a component of life. STRANGER BY THE LAKE focuses on a nude beach alongside a gorgeous lake in the middle of France where local men meet for many purposes, the most common of which is random sex in the nearby woods. Some of the men are lonely and look for companionship; others are just there to watch, treating the lake as a live porno site. Not all of the men openly live a gay lifestyle; in fact most are probably still very much closeted or consider themselves bisexual, not gay. This is the reality of rural France. Guiraudie’s earlier film, the 2009 comedy KING OF ESCAPE featured male-on-male coupling but the sex between them was depicted discreetly. STRANGER BY THE LAKE includes graphic sex because that is what motivates most of its characters.
“The setting is bucolic, soothing. The air is tense. To his credit Guiraudie captures the atmosphere of outdoor cruising perfectly. Outdoor cruising is frequently a game of anticipation. Fittingly, each day starts out much the same as the camera pans the parking lot, giving the viewer a sense of how many men might be present and who some of them are. In constant evidence are a Renault 25 and a Peugeot 205 which initially seem to be present for ambiance; later they are an integral part of the plot.
“The character most central to the plot is Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps) an attractive young man, hungry for romance. He is a regular at the lake who enjoys chatting with acquaintances as he marks time for the next sexual encounter. Franck knows all the regulars and has probably had sex with many of them. Henri (Patrick d’Assumҫao), an overweight, unattractive man is a loner who sits on the edge of the beach area and never talks to a soul; Franck makes an effort to include Henri in his daily rounds.
“One day Franck spies a handsome stranger and briefly engages him in conversation until they are interrupted by the stranger’s boyfriend. The stranger’s name is Michel (Christophe Paou). The next day with no boyfriend in sight, Franck scores. Michel’s animal magnetism has Franck clearly smitten. On another occasion, Franck lingers about the woods long after most of the men have gone home for dinner. Concealed in the shrubbery Franck watches Michel frolicking with his boyfriend in the water. Suddenly frolic turns to mayhem as Michel pushes his boyfriend’s head underwater repeatedly until his body disappears. Franck has just witnessed a murder.
“The following day Michel and Franck meet as though nothing has happened and they go off into the woods for sex. It is here that Guiraudie documents the flirting with danger aspect of outdoor cruising in a not so subtle manner. Does an underlying death wish compel Franck to throw himself into the arms of a known killer? Or was the killing just a figment of his imagination? The latter seems quite possible in the first few days following the incident; then a body is found and a police inspector is suddenly
omnipresent. Inspecteur Damroder (Jérôme Chappatte) chats up all the regulars and follows up with more questioning in successive days. Certainly the inspector is on to something or he would not hover about, day after day. The suspense builds gradually. Although the film is billed as a thriller, payoff is not the point.
“Outdoor cruising is a strange blend of many emotions and Guiraudie taps into all of them. Many critics are eager to draw comparisons to Hitchcock. Although there is much suspense in STRANGER BY THE LAKE, I see no other similarity to any Hitchcock film. What makes STRANGER BY THE LAKE special is its detailed depiction of a subculture. Here plot is secondary to the mood the film creates. During a Q & A at the New York Film Festival, I asked the director if changing attitudes towards homosexuality in Western Europe and North America had made his filmmaking more daring. Guiradie laughed and replied that the biggest change was that actors today are more willing to perform sex scenes. 5 cats”