“STRANGER BY THE LAKE” My rating: C+ (Opening March 7 at the Tivoli)
97 minutes | No MPAA rating
There are movies with gay characters, and then there are gay movies.
Writer/director Alain Guiraudie’s “Stranger By the Lake,” to its detriment, falls into the latter category.
Guiraudie is nothing if not ambitious. Here he has created an erotic thriller about a young man who falls for a hunky fellow whom he knows is a murderer. Alfred Hitchcock’s fingerprints are all over this tale of sexual obsession, and Guiraudie’s distinctive presentational style has its source in Antonioni’s 1966 headscratcher “Blow-Up.”
The film contains a great deal of casual male nudity — which is no big deal. But the enterprise is very nearly derailed by several hardcore sex scenes — the full stand-up-and-salute monty — which work against the eerie mood Guiraudie is trying so hard to create. At this point “Stranger By the Lake” stops being a thriller populated by gay characters and becomes a gay movie, one geared to satisfy the sexual voyeurism of the gay audience.
(I’m not picking on gay cinema. If the relationship depicted had been heterosexual it, too, would have trouble recovering from full-penetration porn moments.)
The entire movie unfolds during one summer week at a rural lake where gay men congregate. Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps) is a pleasant young guy out cruising for a bit of action. He makes the acquaintance of the oddball Henri (Patrick d’Assumcao), a fat, sad-sack straight guy who sits apart from everyone else like a contemplative Buddha. But Franck’s real interest is in Michel (Chrisophe Paou), a moustachioed Adonis who is dealing with a very clingy and jealous boyfriend.
Pierre Deladomchamps, Patrick d’Assumcao
Late that afternoon, from a great distance, Franck sees Michel and his lover cavorting in the middle of the lake. Michel holds his struggling partner under water, then calmly swims back to shore to get dressed on the abandoned beach. Has Franck witnessed a murder?
Looks that way. But instead of notifying the authorities, Franck makes his own play for the now-available Michel. The sex is great. But when the cops find a body in the lake and start asking questions, Franck is torn. Should he protect his new lover, or come clean?
Well, duh.
The fact that Franck even has to think about it suggests the lack of logic at the heart of “Stranger By the Lake.” After all, he could be setting himself up to become Michel’s next victim. Particularly when he finds himself cajoling for time with his beloved away from the isolated lake.
Though they’ve been adequately acted, most of Guiraudie’s characters are paper thin. Franck is unformed, almost childlike in his one dimensionality. Michel is unreadable — a cool stud with a well-concealed psychopathic streak. And there’s a nosy police inspector (Jerone Chappatte) who seems way too eccentric for the job.
The most interesting character, in fact, is the dumpy Henri, who because he isn’t sexually interested in other men can see what’s going on without the lustful distractions. (For some reason I identify him with Piggy in Lord of the Flies.)
“Stranger” starts slowly. Which would be fine if it picked up the pace, but it really doesn’t. Perhaps even more exasperating, it ends on an ambiguous note that defies a tidy resolution.
The film takes place entirely at the lake — a sylvan setting of cool blue water, rocky beach, and lush forest paths where men meet for encounters in the bushes. There’s no musical score — that role is provided by the ever-present wind always gusting through the trees (a direct reference to the hilltop park that plays so central a role in “Blow-Up”) and the hum of insects.
“Stranger By the Lake” is great-looking and casts its own distinctive mood — at least until you realize that its maker isn’t sure where he’s taking us.
| Robert W. Butler
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