TIFF 2013 Review: Stranger By The Lake (2013)

Cast: Pierre Deladonchamps, Christophe Paou, Patrick d’Assumçao
Director: Alain Guiraudie
Country: France
Genre: Drama
Official Trailer: Here

Editor’s Notes: The following review is part of our coverage of the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival. For more information on the festival visit http://tiff.net and follow TIFF on Twitter at @TIFF_NET.

In Alain Guiraudie’s sexually unreserved drama wherein men visit a secluded lake to relax, check each other out, and engage in anonymous yet shameless copulation, the highly atmospheric setting and its established presence of isolation give its visitors a hedonistic liberation that manifests itself through lust, vice, and murder. The film’s temper is rather disturbing, as the actions of the sexually liberated individuals—which are all too explicitly shown—and the continually implicated notion of being trapped with a murderer at a lake in the middle of nowhere cause a sort of push and tug at the opposite ends—pleasure and danger—of the hedonist’s life. Free to unashamedly act out their most private and perverted fantasies, the men at once risk everything, even their lives. While one might have anonymous sex for pleasure, one might also catch diseases anonymously or be killed anonymously. With the camera never leaving the four areas of the lake—the parking lot, woods, beach, and the body of water itself—one gets the sense that there is nothing outside the lake. There is nowhere to go, and nowhere to run. The final image of Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps) in the dark with nowhere to go demonstrates this. A film that primarily expresses itself through mood, Stranger By The Lake does not make judgements on the way these men carry on their lives, it rather brings to light the strangeness of these conditions and the uncanny sense of unknowingness that fosters feelings of estrangement.

A film that primarily expresses itself through mood, Stranger By The Lake does not make judgements on the way these men carry on their lives, it rather brings to light the strangeness of these conditions and the uncanny sense of unknowingness that fosters feelings of estrangement.

Shot almost entirely with still frames, Stranger By The Lake has a slow yet riveting rhythm. The natural sounds and setting are quite aesthetically pleasing, and Guiraudie doesn’t resist from displaying beautiful images of the lake, trees, and sun. There is a tense pulse to the film, which is further exacerbated by the highly explicit sex scenes. While men are naked throughout the film—full frontal male nudity nearly always on display and even accentuated by the framing—and one can get over this and look beyond, the sex scenes, which includes an image of an erect penis ejaculating (yes, semen and all) and a man performing oral sex on another man, shock and disturb the audience. But, while the frequency and length of these relatively non-plot-related sex scenes are obscene, they support the atmospheric qualities of the film in providing for the viewer a profound cinematic affect: while the film documents isolation, lust, strangeness, and tension, the viewer may feel equally isolated, lustful, strange, or tense.

Shot almost entirely with still frames, Stranger By The Lake has a slow yet riveting rhythm. The natural sounds and setting are quite aesthetically pleasing, and Guiraudie doesn’t resist from displaying beautiful images of the lake, trees, and sun.

Throughout the film, Henri (Patrick d’Assumçao), a man who gets himself killed on purpose, is the only one who acts rationally. While Franck is aware that his lover is a killer, he continues to perpetuate a delusional quest for romantic entanglement with the man, consistently asking him to leave the lake and go home with him. Clearly only interested in the lustful nature of relationships, Michel (Christophe Paou), who remains a stranger throughout the film, never makes his motivations clear. Perhaps it is because of this that Franck continues to love him; it’s that strange sense of mystery from the not-knowing that makes one curious to know more.

On the other hand, Henri, the hermit type who sits by himself and gets insulted by the others, commits an act of great sacrifice to ensure that his friend Franck sees things for what they are. He does this to remind Franck that the once anonymous man he found at an isolated beach is still a mere stranger—capable of anything. Despite that sexual intercourse brings the men together, they are all still strangers to one another, and one must exercise a bit of caution when dealing with strangers. With the thrill of anonymous and unabashed sex juxtaposed with the fears of encounters with the strange and unknown, Stranger By The Lake puts into conversation the pleasure principal with its downfall. While the idea of pleasure drives these men to act instinctively, their pleasure doesn’t go without consequence—without pain—and the love received from forming a communion with another person is put into striking comparison with the despair received from a lonely and isolated existence.

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Kamran Ahmed

Staff Film Critic. Visit my personal blog at Aesthetics of The Mind

Kamran's areas of interest include formalism, realism & reality, affect, and notions of the aesthetic. With experiences as a TA, an event panelist, a presenter at conferences from UofT to Harvard, and a writer of a self-authored film blog, Kamran would like to share with others his profound interest in the profilmic in the hopes of inspiring, in them, a similar love for film.

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