'Stranger by the Lake' and its dangerous sensuality

City Paper grade: A

A tranquil setting hides unsettling truths in director Alain Guiraudie’s minimalist thriller — not just the murder that drives its deceptively simple plot. Set entirely at a lakeside gay cruising spot, Stranger by the Lake follows Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps) as he spends his summer partaking of the site’s daily rituals: stripping bare, making small talk with other regulars and pairing off to slip away into the woods for casual (and often explicitly shot) sex. He sets his sights on one particular object of desire, a Selleck-stached swimmer named Michel (Christophe Paou), who only seems to become more attractive after Franck observes him drowning his former lover. The film reveals its slippery ambiguities in its title: Is the stranger Michel or Henri, the older, overweight, seemingly straight guy with whom Franck strikes up an uneasy friendship? Is it Franck himself, who reveals little of himself to his newfound intimates? Or could the title refer not to a person but to the effect of the isolated, edenic spot, where these men are free to act differently, stranger perhaps, than they can elsewhere? That sense is certainly reflected in Franck’s logically irrational desire for a man he knows to be dangerous, even deadly, as he is the sole witness to Michel’s crime — think Rear Window if Jimmy Stewart had been turned on by Raymond Burr. There’s also an HIV metaphor, especially since Franck’s risky behaviors also run to unprotected sex with strangers. But the film’s elusive sensuality runs deeper. The mystery here is not the murderer’s identity but the rationale of desire, which all of us struggle to solve.