Interesteg What makes it different from others?

NekoHomey Purely Joyful Movie!

Mehdi Hoffman There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Ginger Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

helena-73023 I'm a fan of Hitchcock but Hitchcock, this is not. Hitchcock authored MYSTERIES AND THRILLERS. This is nothing but intense gay pornography. I'm an open-minded person who loves foreign, indie and all kinds of films, especially subtitles. But this was just...bad. I watched it through to ensure an accurate review. If you removed all the close-up gay scenes, money shots, oral and just plain pornography, the actual dialogue and story take up only 10 minutes. Moreover, it's incredibly predictable and left no plot twist. Then again, THIS FILM IS ABSENT OF A PLOT. The entire movie is nothing but a gay man cruising for risky gay sex at a lake which is a known gay hangout, at which time he witnesses a murder. There is no suspense. There is nothing but hardcore adult scenes and close-up shots of what's happening in those adult scenes. In the USA I'm fairly certain this would be rated "X" for adult because there's nothing but come shots in rapid succession...oral, hand, back end, anything gay, it happens here. But no actual STORY. I waited for a plot to emerge until the end and nothing happened, except for more hardcore adult scenes. Is there some secret message hidden in this film that I'm missing? Don't be gay because you'll get killed at a lake? Shoot your spunk to the left? I'm all about erotic but this is not. Just scene after scene after scene of passionless risky gay scenes at a beach. Another reviewer compared this to Rear Window. It is nothing like Hitchcock but NOW I get the joke! A million close-ups of rears in the scenes!

morrison-dylan-fan 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.

PJ Castellaneta This movie made me very nervous - a lot of male sex and nudity out in the open, on the beach, and with no protection. No sunscreen. At all. Shocking! (haven't the French ever heard of skin cancer?)While it sometimes verges into Serious Movie territory, breaking sexual taboos in a very realistic and honest way, too much of the film is just silly and arbitrary. The randomness of actions among the characters seemed guided more by the writer's keyboard than by actual human behavior. Which is a shame because so many of the film's elements: acting, direction, music, editing et al. are is so first-rate, and many of the scenes on their own feel so emotionally authentic.But in a world where anything can happen for no apparent reason, nothing carries any import. And then one's mind is free to contemplate the clumsiness of the film's obvious symbolism and how uncomfortable it must have been for the actors to have to sit on that rocky lakeshore bare-assed.And eventually, it all just spirals out of control. Which made me feel sad, but for all the wrong reasons.

Michael Thompson 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.