Stranger by the Lake – review

This stunning psychological drama takes place in an atmosphere of frank homoeroticism, utterly without inhibition or taboo


Alain Guiraudie's L'Inconnu Du Lac, or Stranger by the Lake, is a stunning, confrontationally explicit psychological drama set at a French lakeside cruising spot for gay men. He creates an atmosphere of absolutely frank homoeroticism, utterly without inhibition or taboo. I was reminded of Alan Hollinghurst's The Swimming Pool Library or Thom Gunn's poem The Discovery of the Pacific. But when a single, terrible event takes place, the mood swings to that of classic Hollywood suspense, like John M Stahl's Leave Her to Heaven (1945) or George Stevens's A Place in the Sun (1951), movies in which a beautiful lake becomes the epicentre of danger.

Christophe Paou plays Michel, a handsome, well-built man who comes to the lake and is instantly enamoured of Michel, played by Pierre Deladonchamps, who has already struck up a tender, platonic friendship with Henri (Patrick d'Assumçao), a fat, lonely and unhappy guy who sits by himself, away from the others.

Stranger By The Lake

This nexus of relationships is placed under intense scrutiny when the police are called in to investigate a certain terrible event. An inspector finds himself perplexed and frustrated by the cruising credo: guys who are into voyeurism should make good witnesses, but those who don't ask each other's names or phone numbers, guys who cultivate a willed forgetfulness about yesterday's experience so as to prepare the way for the next contact – they are creating a cloud of unknowing, highly injurious to a police investigation. Guiraudie's sheer frankness about sex is refreshing: far away from any prurient Joe-Eszterhas-type erotic danger. It is an almost pastoral scene, which makes the single violent act, and the reaction to it, so disturbing.

The Guardian