I've read the glowing reviews, and read the many awards that this film has received and I just do not understand it. It completely confuses me.This film is devoid of any substance. There is absolutely nothing in the movie that would make it a thriller. If you call it a thriller, it's a thriller without the thrill. It's a drama with very mild drama. There is not enough sex to be a porn, and there is not enough drama to be a drama. It's just nothing.Sex is sex. I don't have an issue with it. Some of the scenes you think "yeah, OK, I get it, that's enough now".The whole film I sat thinking "ok something is going to happen soon" but no it never happened. The ending just irritated me like no other film's ending has ever done before. How could someone be so stupid. No one would do that.The 2 I gave was purely because the setting of Lake of Sainte-Croix was beautiful.

2014:Taking a look at various "best of 2013" list,I spotted a title which appeared to be the first Neo-Noir to have a lead gay character.Getting hold of the DVD,I was disappointed to find that it had no English Subtitles.2016:Gathering up French movies to watch over the next few months,I decided to take a second look for the film,and was thrilled to discover that it has come out in the UK!,which led to me finally getting set to meet the stranger by the lake.The plot:During the summer, Franck visit a gay (unofficial cruising) beach.Laying around on the beach,Franck starts talking to a timid guy called Henri,who has recently broken up with his girlfriend.Along with Henri,Franck meets Michel and his boyfriend Pascal.Despite knowing the he has a partner,Franck cant stop himself from falling in love for the rebellious Michel.Whilst walking to his car one night,Franck discovers that Michel is more rebellious than he originally believed,when he sees Michel killing Pascal in the lake.View on the film:Set entirely in one location,writer/director Alain Guiraudie & cinematographer Claire Mathon avoid the title drying up by giving it an eerie supernatural atmosphere,where the waves of the ocean and the rustic sounds of the woods (with no score being used) leading the lake feeling like a Neo-Noir wilderness,cut off from the rest of the world.Leaving the train going under the bridge sexual metaphor to the past, Guiraudie takes an extremely non-conformist approach to the graphic sex scenes,which whilst feeling a bit jarring from the slick sheen of the movie,actually does very well at undressing the growing obsession Franck has for Michel.Before Michel swims into Franck's life,the screenplay by Guiraudie takes a simmering comedic dip in the sea,by giving Franck conversations with Henri a dry playfulness which cleverly highlights how disconnected they both are from life away from the lake.Drowning into Neo-Noir waters, Guiraudie stabs the laughs with an increasingly heated mood of something deadly laying just underneath the surface of Franck and Michel's love,that leads to a hauntingly open ending,where Franck and Michel play "forbidden games." Sporting a 70's moustache, Christophe Paou gives a nerve-ripping performance as Michel,by Paou making the sparse dialogue crackle with a Noir grittiness.Joined by an excellent Patrick d'Assumçao striking Henri with just the right amount of tragic comedic sincerity, Pierre Deladonchamps gives a superb performance as Franck,thanks to Deladonchamps capturing the waves of lust over Franck,as the lake of death goes dead calm.

Strangers By The Lake is as explicitly confronting as it is rivetingly exciting. The film is excellently crafted, positioning you in Franck's perspective of the whole unfolding. It's eerie, but done so in such a way that it is fresh and original. It's erotic, but thrilling and at times even scary. Though Stranger By The Lake may suffer from what it tries to shock you with, nothing can beat how compelling the unveiling of it's climatic end is.Stranger By The Lake is an excellent piece of French cinema. Nothing is quite like it and I highly doubt anything will be like it. Though at times you may feel a bit overwhelmed by what it is delivering, it's hard to ignore what it serves up to you, and what it serves is marvelous.

I am not a gay man, and so I can say that this film had a beauty, it wasn't porn, it was about gay men on a lake, doing what any couple's do, talking etc etc.The film didn't have a core story, it was like watching a poem without words, with the lake being the observer.If find continental films very poetic in most case, very philosophical, this movie tended to be this way.Rating this movie is not easy because it did have quality. I have given it 4.It wasn't porn, it was slow, chatty, highly sexual, and it gave an overview of the world of gay men.