• L’Inconnu du lac (Stranger by the Lake)

8/1/25 (Fri)

A recent retrospective of the work of French writer/director Alain Guiraudie in connection with his latest release, Misericordia (2024), resurrected this 2013 film. The isolated scenes that I had watched on Criterion seemed like gratuitous porn disguised as suspense, which dampened my interest, but recommendations from friends made me reconsider. I learned that the French inconnu means both “the unknown” as well as a type of whitefish, making this an untranslatable pun; the dialogue refers to a monster 30-foot catfish supposedly haunting the lake, and the idea of a mysterious creature in the water takes on further significance later. I do like how the English “stranger” has a double meaning here.

Franck, a young vegetable seller, frequents a gay nude beach on a large lake with nearby woods providing cover for extracurricular fun. Fit, handsome and usually unclothed, he has no problem finding temporary relief in the woods and does so often. Few people offer or ask their names, and most seem content with one-time action, including a voyeur who just wants to masturbate to the sight of others copulating.

Franck, however, is looking for something more permanent, not easy in an environment where anonymity is the preferred mode. His hopes are raised when he exchanges glances with the strikingly good-looking, mustachioed Michel (a dead ringer for Tom Selleck), who is just his type but appears to have a boyfriend. Meanwhile, he also gets to know an older straight guy Henri, portly and rather less attractive, who sits apart from the crowd and becomes something of a confidant. Henri had an overactive sex life himself but is disconsolate after being dumped by his girlfriend, which has made him realize the emptiness of physical-driven relationships. That logic, though, naturally goes right over the head of the horny Franck.

Franck, obsessed with Michel, spots him from afar swimming with his boyfriend. As he watches enviously and unnoticed, he is shocked when, Rear Window-like, he spies Michel drowning the boy, then swimming calmly back to shore and leaving without even removing the boy’s towel and belongings. Nevertheless, Franck’s lust for the hunky Michel blinds him to the danger, and he keeps quiet about the crime as they pursue a torrid affair (including blow jobs and anal sex shown in all their glory).

He maintains his silence when the body is dredged up the next day and denies any knowledge of the affair to a prying inspector, who naturally suspects Michel. At the same time, he is frustrated that Michel, for all his passion in the woods, refuses to spend the night together or meet outside the beach. Their affair is all lust and no love. The inspector, for his part, is disgusted that the men on the beach continue as usual despite the death, and possibly murder, of a fellow beachgoer.

Henri senses Franck’s discomfort and suspects that he knows something about Michel that he is not revealing. When Franck goes off for a swim, Henri approaches Michel and hints that he knows what the latter did. The straight Henri then lures the man into the woods, where Michel promptly slits his throat. Franck, finding the beach deserted, runs frantically into the woods and discovers his friend dying. Henri tells him cryptically in his last breath that this is what he wanted.

Through the trees, Franck sees Michel stabbing the inspector to death and realizes that he is next. He runs away into the woods as Michel calls his name and proclaims he loves him. At the end, it is pitch black, and Franck hears Michel proclaiming finally that he wants to spend the night with him. Franck ultimately steps out of his hiding place and calls for his lover. The film halts abruptly without wrapping that up.

The film doesn’t make it clear why Henri sacrifices himself for Franck. I suppose the idea is that he realizes that Franck is too much in lust to see things correctly and wants to prove to him that Michel is a dangerous character, acting out the genuine love from the heart that Franck was so desperate to find in others. Even so, his actions, basically inviting Michel to murder him, strain credulity. Neither would Franck appear likely to seek out Michel in the dark knowing that the guy has a knife and has already stabbed two people. The ending is bizarre and unsatisfying, and does not appear well thought out.

Still, the plot until that point is solidly constructed, and the director skillfully builds the tension. At one Hitchcock-worthy moment, Franck is swimming alone in the lake when he notes Michel, much the better swimmer, coming ominously in his direction, not knowing whether the latter is aiming to greet him or drown him, or whether Michel even knows he’s there. The effect is like Jaws, capitalizing on the fear of the unknown in the watery environment as with the legendary monster catfish supposedly lurking underneath. Unlike that film, the impact is intensified by the lack of manipulative music – in fact, there’s no soundtrack throughout the film.

One curious element was that the entire cast is male. While that’s understandable for a gay cruising beach, the narrow perspective, including the concentration on this limited geographic space, gives the film a claustrophobic feel despite the openness of the lake setting. The director manages to achieve a sun-drenched noir. The camera marks the time by returning each day to the parking lot, where we see Franck arriving, and the filmmaker uses lots of shots of sky and trees, even interspersing them with grunts and groans during sex scenes. But the action remains confined to the beach and woods with the scattered naked bodies lying around. This highlights the constricted focus of the characters themselves as well as the sadness of those like the masturbator seeking a human connection in all the wrong places.

The film takes its time in developing the story and, notwithstanding the confused final sequences, is both an accomplished suspense flick and an examination of serious themes. The hard-core sex, which includes anal sex, erections and ejaculations (stand-ins or “doublers”, presumably porn stars, are credited at the end), will put off some viewers, which is a shame, especially since those scenes are not strictly necessary – a lot less would have been more. The standouts in what is essentially a five-person cast were Pierre Deladonchamps as Franck and especially Patrick d’Assumçao as Henri. (Misercordia similarly features a good-looking protagonist and an overweight loner. Must be a theme with him.) The director himself apparently appears early on as one of the “naturalists” on the beach. An odd but interesting film.