Stranger By The Lake opens theatrically in Los Angeles on January 31st from Strand Releasing.
What comes to mind when you hear the phrase “erotic thriller”? Billowing drapes? Candles everywhere? Soft blue lighting? A sexy, sexy saxophone wailing in the background? Stiff labored dialogue, delivered by stiff, labored catalogue models?
Stranger By The Lake is every inch an erotic thriller. And if one were to read the one-line synopsis, it doesn’t sound any different than any of a million similar sounding titles that clogged up the shelves of video stores everywhere in the mid to late ’90s. But it is a very different beast indeed, and not just for the obvious reasons.
Let’s dispense with the “story” right off the bat, shall we? It all takes place by a lake that’s a cruising spot for men. Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps), a young layabout, only has eyes for the enigmatic Michel (Christophe Paou, rocking a ’70s porno ‘stache worthy of devout worship), who already has a rather possessive boyfriend. Late one night, Michel murders said boyfriend, an act that, unbeknownst to Michel, Franck happens to witness. Not long thereafter, the two fall into a relationship. Franck has finally landed his dream guy, but how long before the past catches up with them?
Pretty standard Sleeping With The Enemy stuff, really. But with three major differences: One, it’s gay. Two, it’s French. And three, it’s actually really good.
Now, like I said, the outline sounds like a thriller, and the details of the film bear that out. But this is worlds removed from the American style of thriller, with their set pieces, their plot twists, and their overwrought music scores.
There are no set pieces. There are no “GOTCHA!” twists. And there’s no musical score at all.
This truly is a psychological thriller, where the inner psyche of the characters is the root of all the drama. We’re not watching a bunch of manufactured chases, or stylized murder sequences. We’re directly with Franck as it slowly occurs to him that getting busy with a murderer might not be the wisest of life choices.
It’s surprising how spartan things are here. We don’t get a whole lot of backstory for our characters. We don’t meet their families or visit their houses. In fact, we never even leave the lake. The entire story takes places on its shore and in the nearby woods, where people sneak off to casually hook up.
And over the course of the 100 or so minutes of the film, despite not really learning much about the characters, an interesting thing happens: it all becomes lived in and familiar. Without truly getting to know any of the characters, you still feel this sense of community and routine. The jealous boyfriend who warns everyone away from his man; the tightly wound fellow in the Batman t-shirt; the poor guy that just wants to watch… while acting as little more than side characters in the lives of Franck and Michel, they manage to create the illusion of life outside of the movie itself: we’re not just watching a movie; we’re people watching too.
And yes, this being an erotic thriller and all, we are often watching these people have sex. Frequently, and with great relish.
And because this is a French movie, the sex actually seems fun.
The way we deal with sex in American movies, especially casual sex, has always bugged me. There’s often a conservative streak (particularly in drama), where the promiscuous are punished for their transgressions. And even when the consequences aren’t death, unwanted pregnancy, or rejection, persecution, and despair, the odds are decent that at least one of the involved parties isn’t enjoying it at all.
When we accept these conservative conceits at face value, we do a disservice to the wide range of sexual experiences that exist. And since movies are where we tend to pick up our sexual cues from, there’s a damaging trickle down effect that doesn’t do us any favors as a society.
(Although I suppose that teens these days are learning about sex from the internet, which would be utterly horrifying if I ever stopped to think about it).
At any rate, credit where credit is due: There’s a LOT of sex in this movie. A lot of very, very explicit sex. But it’s all done with a certain light touch. There’s a matter-of-factness and a casual eroticism to the proceedings here that personally, I found to be fairly refreshing. Even under the dark circumstances, everyone is still enjoying themselves, and there’s something vaguely revolutionary in that.
But that’s not the best part of the film. No, the best part is the relationship between Franck and a pudgy, aloof man named Henri, played by Patrick D’Assumçao. Franck befriends Henri, and they strike up a relationship that’s somewhere between being buddies and (nonsexual) love, and there’s a sweetness to their interactions that really worked for me, and which increases the sense of dread when we remember what kind of movie this really is…
Because yes, at the end of the day, the movie is a thriller, and deep down we know that things have to go wrong. To its credit, the movie puts off the inevitable as long as it can, content to idyll in the sun. It’s so absorbing in the details that we’re almost reluctant to deal with the whole murder thing. Michel is so charismatic that you kind of hope that somehow he’s not the guy who did what we already saw him do. And when those nightmarish final moments unfold in almost total blackness (shades of Wait Until Dark), the time spent getting to know these people makes it all the more crushing.
Without going into spoilers, I have to say that at first, the ending disappointed me a bit. But given time to consider it, I think the ambiguity of the ending was the only way to go. It’s not going to be satisfying for some, but I’m not sure a more conventional resolution one way or the other would have felt right. Sure, it would resolve the plot, but the plot wasn’t the thing that made Stranger By The Lake so good in the first place; it was the characters. And leaving them where we do, as lost and confused as we in the audience are, seems fitting.
