What a beautiful movie!

A Disappointing Continuation

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

The first thing you'll notice about this film is the beautiful cinematography. The run time, which is just over 1 and a half hours, is full of long, gorgeous shots of the lake and the woods surrounding it. The fact that the entire story takes place at this lake also adds an air of mystique to the proceedings, creating a moody atmosphere. However, this proves not to be enough to carry the film, as it still seems rather slow throughout. The dialogue is trite and there's hardly any characterization, leaving the motivations of the subjects rather vague. There is gratuitous nudity but almost no violence, or any action (other than several sex scenes) until the last twenty minutes. In the end, the fact that this film is merely 'good', when it had the potential to be 'great', is somewhat maddening.

STRANGER BY THE LAKE is a lean, low key thriller about a serial killer stalking a cruising spot for gay men in France. There's no more story to it than that - this is an ultra-cheap production, shot entirely in the outdoors in a single location, that somehow manages to retain the viewer's attention despite the almost entire lack of narrative thrust and propelment.Instead we get thrusting of a different variety - the director chooses to pad his story out with endless gay sex scenes, some of the most explicit ever put on camera outside of a porn film. In fact, at times, this is what the film resembles; a work of pornography with a little added plot. As a straight viewer, I can't say I was particularly involved or invested in the proceedings, and I would have felt the same had it been heterosexual sex involved.The performances are all as low key as the naturalistic, documentary feel to the production would have you expect, and yet the cinematography is pretty decent and when the film finally gets into the thriller groove in the last few scenes it becomes pretty suspenseful. Just a shame that the story itself could have been condensed into a twenty-minute short.

While the content might be off-putting to some, STRANGER BY THE LAKE is a somewhat effective thriller that toys with its audience by taking things slow. However, in my opinion, things were a little TOO slow at times. The main drive to the plot doesn't really happen until about halfway through and the narrative doesn't move forward any until about two-thirds of the way in. Up until that point, it's mostly just a lot of dialogue-driven character development.. There was also no score, which I thought might have helped. Still, I enjoyed the naturalistic photography. Overall, I found it slightly boring until the plot really kicked in, but the film is not without its merits. Recommended for non-prudes who enjoy French cinema. I don't really see this film having that wide of an audience, though.

Alain Guiraudie's film is highly disturbing, not so much for its frank portrayal of sexuality or in the violence of its ending, but rather in its representation of human imprisonment. The title is deliberately ambiguous: at the beginning of the film we think that straight man Henri (Patrick d'Assumçao) is the stranger by the lake, as he comes every to sit on his own, looking out across the lake without participating in any of the couplings that preoccupy all the other visitors. Although striking up a friendship with Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps), he always seems a lonely, alienated figure. As the action unfolds, however, we come to understand that every single man who comes to bathe by the lake is a stranger; their lives are strangely disconnected, dominated by cruising and casual affairs. Any attempt to develop a love-affair any further is rejected, especially by Franck's lover Michel (Christophe Paou). Structurally speaking, THE STRANGER ON THE LAKE comprises a series of repetitive shots of automobiles parked close to the lake, interspersed with shots of the lake itself and the bathers undertaking their daily rituals. The situation seems positively idyllic, but in this film it is represented as a form of imprisonment. No one, it seems, can give vent to their feelings; they can only participate in the accepted rituals. Hence Henri represents something of a subversive force - even though he doesn't actually do anything. Love in this film has been reduced to a series of casual affairs between strangers. The dialog is spare, almost inconsequential; the shooting-style slow, comprised of long takes; both of these cinematic strategies help to reinforce the confining nature of this world: no one says anything of any consequence (to do so would be dangerous), and no one ever does anything different. Repetition equals security; unexpected movement - as symbolized through fast cutting - is a threat to the order of this world. STRANGER BY THE LAKE is a powerful film, beautifully shot and performed.