STRANGER BY THE LAKE (Alain Guiraudie). 100 minutes. Subtitled. Opens Friday (January 17) at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. For times, see listings. Rating: NNNNN
Stark and seductive, serene and unnerving, lucid and mysterious, Alain Guiraudie’s Stranger By The Lake is a sublime balance of contrasts.
There is no music, few close-ups and one single evocative setting. Nothing feels severe, yet everything has been quietly stripped down – including the characters, all of them men, nearly all of them frequenters of a secluded nude beach and the adjoining woods used for cruising.
Handsome, amiable Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps) goes to the lake to sunbathe, chat, swim, have sex. One evening, in a magnificent sustained point-of-view shot, Franck, unseen amidst the tress, witnesses a murder. This doesn’t appear to discourage him from returning the next day, or even from flirting with the killer. We know he’s not averse to danger – he doesn’t fuss over condoms. But psychology or motives are not discussed. As in the fiction of Marguerite Duras or, for that matter, Hitchcock, eros and death are entwined without rational explanation.
Exquisite geometries abound: the gazes of men seeking lovers the recurring images of parked cars or bare bodies reclining on the pebbled shore. Immaculately crafted, sexually explicit without seeming lewd, Stranger extends an invitation that’s hard to refuse.
Don’t be afraid. Dip a toe in. The water’s fine.
