Stranger by the Lake

Winner of a directing prize at the Cannes Film Festival, Alain Guiraudie’s exploration of death and desire unfolds entirely in the vicinity of a gay cruising ground that becomes a crime scene. Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps) is a regular at a lakeside pickup spot, where he finds companionship both platonic and carnal. But his new paramour Michel (Christophe Paou) turns out to be a love-’em-and-leave-’em type, in the deadliest sense… Guiraudie has long been a singular voice in French cinema: anti-bourgeois, at ease in nature, a true regionalist and outsider. Here he captures naked bodies and hardcore sex with the same matter-of-fact sensuousness that he brings to ripples on the water and the fading light of dusk.