Stranger by the Lake [L’inconnu du lac] **** (2013, Pierre Deladonchamps, Christophe Paou, Patrick d’Assumçao, Jérôme Chappatte) – Film Review

Pierre Deladonchamps stars in Stranger by the Lake [L’inconnu du lac] (2013) as good-looking 30something Franck, who one summer starts getting addicted to a cruising ground for men, tucked away on the stony shores of a quiet, idyllic French lake.

Franck sees an older, tubby guy Henri (Patrick d’Assumçao) always on his own, just sitting there, and starts up regular chats with him. He talks to a couple of old buddies. He sees the handsome stereotype Michel (Christophe Paou), starts cruising him and falls for him passionately. Michel’s with a boyfriend, and Franck soon discovers that he’s lethally dangerous, but he doesn’t want this to get in the way of living out his crazy passion.

Soon these men aren’t the only ones on the beach when the creepy police Inspecteur Damroder (Jérôme Chappatte) starts poking his nose into everyone’s business, at least the ones still alive.

Peppered with lots of nudity and graphic full-on gay sex, writer-director Alain Guiraudie’s atmospheric, suspenseful thriller also plays like a gay porn movie and a horror film. So you get three films for the price of one. That’s an offer you couldn’t refuse if it was in Tesco.

Stranger by the Lake plays out entirely on the one location, with a tiny main cast of five and total of 10 and in the course of a few days in a way that Hitchcock would have liked. You could make a stage version of it easily without having to change anything very much. But it’s not static at all, in fact it’s extremely filmic.

And in many ways it’s a classic-style thriller made in vintage fashion, but with modern dressing, or undressing in this case. It’s very well made and extremely well acted with nowhere to hide by the whole cast, but especially by the sympathetic Deladonchamps, who has the movie pretty much to himself.

It’s vital to the film that he can play such an attractive, powerful man but with an inner passivity and insecurity so convincingly. A man with a flaw, sex comes before security and safety or even sense and sensibility.

Maybe that’s what the film’s about. And it is about something. But what the film’s actually about is another matter. It leaves messages and conclusions entirely up to the viewer. Subtle that. Like the police inspector, we stay in the dark, a bit puzzled and mystified, still trying to piece together the bits of the jigsaw.

And, like all the characters in the film, we never really discover anything about anybody. They are basically lonely and unfathomable. They remain strangers (inconnus) to themselves and to us.

However, it’s best to enjoy Stranger by the Lake as a straightforward compulsive classic-style thriller. And it’s a good, unsettling one that grips all the way to its surprise ending.

The gay sex will surprise, maybe shock a few people, maybe entertain a few others. Again, why it’s so full-on is another matter we can argue for ever.

It was screened at the Cannes and London Film Festivals in 2013. It has quality about it but it’s not an ‘art movie’ in any way.

In March 2020, Tilda Swinton selected the film as one of 11 she wants every moviegoer to see. She said: ‘Exquisitely atmospheric summer cruising. Boys looking for boys and the idyll of abandon. A breathtakingly swoony study in wicked tension, the romance of danger, and real erotic yearning.’

© Derek Winnert 2013 derekwinnert.com

Pierre Deladonchamps was born on June 1, 1978 in Nancy, France.