STRANGER BY THE LAKE, the French gay semi-thriller by Alain Guiraudie

Film Comment on Guiraudie's work and SbtL... bevare, spoilers within.

http://www.filmcomment.com/article/stranger-by-the-lake-alain-guiraudie

This was great.

we are getting a retro of his films in nyc...this weekend? fuck.

Roi de l'évasion is hilarious. I have no idea what to expect of this one.

Erections and voyeurism. At least on the screen.

So it's like Roi de l'évasion, but a thriller? I'm in.

well, I haven't seen any of the others, but that one looks fun.

so so good

need to see this

Loved it, but not sure I trust my reaction. (Ditto goes for that new HBO show about VGL S.F. gays.)

Keyframe: It seems to me that the kind of public cruising you depict is dying down and many younger gay men are interested in raising families and getting married. Did you ever think of making Stranger By the Lake a period piece?

Guiraudie: This is a very American question. Here in the U.S., everyone thinks that whole world [of public cruising] is dead. I think that for us in France, this kind of cruising still exists. We’re not yet at the stage where this kind of hyper-sexuality belongs to the past. Certain things, like the Internet, have changed it, but my film is a combination of the seventies and the present. The seventies brings us a sunny quality, the present day offers a nightmare. The film reflects how the sexual liberation experience of the seventies has changed to become something more consumerist. Perhaps the film reflects some nostalgia on my part for the idea that sexual liberation not only made us free but made us stand out instead of becoming standardized individuals.

http://www.fandor.com/keyframe/alain-guiraudies-stranger-by-the-lake

WTF, this is a thriller!

Albeit one extremely open to interpretation.

yeah, it's lots of other things too. Since Guiraudie is of my age group, I find it more interesting as a theoretical riff on cruising and public sex.

It probably scans as a thriller to me for many of the same reasons.

Anyway, the patch I pasted is pretty much exactly what he was asked at the NYFF four months ago. Also interesting that he doesn't think of the chill chub guy as gay.

should get the screener this week

When did you learn the secret screener handshake?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/Zoe_Lyons_Cigar_Wink_High_Res.jpg

I need to get hooked up since I'll no longer be on the mailing lists

You're talking about the cruising mailing lists, right?

also this needs to be seen on a goddamn big screen, if you're not busy taking notes *ptui*

It opens here in a few weeks, sugah

Screener attained. Time to cruise.

While I quite liked the 51-minute-long That Old Dream That Moves, having now seen all of Guiraudie's oeuvre I'd say that Stranger surpasses everything else.

Yes, quite good except for the hocus pocus ending.

Bette Midler's in it?

her ass gets a good fingerin', yes

sick now

lemme know if you've written about this, alfred? i couldn't attach hocus pocus to the ending, it feels like a flowering of the super-tight tension that's been held fairly constant throughout. as a space it reminds me of like tropical malady or something, so webbed to its environment.

i've heard ppl say they hate the ending, don't get that.

s a space it reminds me of like tropical malady or something, so webbed to its environment.

Good point!

I wrote a review but it's holding until the movie opens in Miami (next weekend).

Context matters: twenty four hours earlier I'd recoiled from "Looking" and despaired of a good gay anything. The movie was better than the dalliance with the dude in the Green Lantern shirt on Saturday, I'll tell ya that.

i'm just about caught up on looking, i do feel like i'm being alarmingly, almost didactically well looked after in it, personified & handled into a gay milieu via stand-in. the angles of this felt just so much bolder, spacious, confident. curious about morbs catching the other flicks (i have the shortish, cannes one queued up to watch); seeing this just made me like WHO IS ALAIN GUIRAUDIE AND WHERE DID HE COME FROM, it's so controlled

will be checkin for your review here & at yr blog btw so post if you feel inclined

yes the shortish, cannes one is clearly related to this one in dynamics tho not at all on the surface.

how short-ish is the Cannes version? My DVD was about 85 minutes.

we're talking about a different film (I think), That Old Dream That Moves (51m), which Godard praised. Starnger has always been exhibited at the same length afaik.

oh, no, i was meaning That Old Dream That Moves, something which my superficial knowledge of Guiraudie's filmography tells me is <1hr & which played at Cannes a while ago & was lauded by Godard as the best thing there. afaik Stranger just exists as it is.

oh woops

i am v jealous of nyc having the opportunity to correct these very natural, late-to-the-party worldwide film culture faux pas

I was most impatient with his 2 shorts, and one feature, set in a 'sci-fi' agrarian quasi-medieval land where Warriors hunt bandits amid the oppression of shepherds, and people either have three names or are called something like Sapphire Morning. (Romney above far more indulgent of these)

he is v fond of pansexual 50-to-75-yo men in these tho.

i really like jonathan romney but was so confused by him existing surname only in this post ^^

here you go

"strange way of loving" hon

Anyone seen No Rest for the Brave? It debuted to much acclaim ten years ago: a time and space jumping rural crime thriller/coming of age story. Not entirely successful, but the democratic approach to sex also prevalent (the overweight voyeur on the beach in SBTL plays the boy's lover iirc).

yes. meh.

also those are two different actors

(didn't say, btw; i saw on twitter & liked, alfred. wasn't familiar with the two references you used to beat it over the head, & consequently won't seek them out)

King of Escape getting a week's NYC run, I'm sure other cities may follow... Certainly worth seeing esp from a not-typically-gay perspective, tho I don't think any of the older films match SbtL.

http://www.artforum.com/film/id=46202

amazingly stranger by the lake actually came to my town and i missed it--was just too busy the one week it played here. but i really want to see it. blu-ray it is, i suppose.

i saw one of his earlier films, "no rest for the brave," when it opened in france. it struck me as a little too beholden to art-cinema cliches but overall i liked it. hope to see it again sometime.

stranger was pretty great; curious to see other films by this guy from my not-typically-gay perspective

Seeing it tomorrow. Really looking forward to it.

i too have a not-typically-gay perspective, seeing as i'm not gay.

All the kids are doin' it

this is on Netflix, I loved it!!

pvmic for screen name

I really liked this too. In an interview with Guiraudie (included on the DVD, which I got from the local public library--were they aware of the not-at-all simulated blow jobs and orgasms when they ordered this?), he plays the usual game of discussing the universality (read: not just for gays) of the subject matter, but I ain't buying it. This is a (post?)-AIDS thriller all the way.

Alfred: really liked your review, but like schlump, I'm not sure what you're referring to re: the ending. Do you mean the way the last 10-ish mins play out, or the last shot? Feel free to take this off thread if we wanna spoiler-guard (you know where to reach me, yes?).

I rewatched (from the library also) the other night (btw I think all the blowjobs and orgasms are simulated, except for one each).

Found it significant this time that Franck says "I'm going to come, kiss me" twice.

I'm a bit baffled that films like this place in the upper ranks of some crix polls, and the actors don't. In a US film I think a role like Patrick d’Assumçao's (the non-gay-identifying onlooker) would garner the plaudits.

the police inspector is incredible in two (i think?) extremely brief scenes.

I mentioned him to the Florida critics.

*d’Assumçao, that is

he finished 9th in the Indiewire poll for supporting actor

I didn't do a criticwire ballot this year (deadline passed while I was out not getting any), but d’Assumçao and Deladonchamps woulda both gotten citations from me.

Walter Chaw's blurb from his year-end list offers a spot-on take on the film, I thought:

A Rudy Metzger film on the surface, a Thomas Mann story underneath, it's about longing and carnality; uses Hitchcock correctly in a sentence; and is home to an absolutely haunted last twenty minutes that capture, ineffably, what Stephen King used to capture in his short stories. It's that feeling of the infernal crossing over into the mundane, but cheerfully--which, of course, makes it that much more horrible. It's about the body as a projection of the heart, until it's not, and the heart is well and truly deceived. Another debut; Alain Guiraudie is one to watch.

Debut?

yeah he's been making movies for at least a decade.

the best of which is No Rest For the Brave.

Rudy Metzger??

finally saw this. it has brilliant/beautiful/sinister atmosphere/photography, and i loved a lot of the dialogue, and the little observations on intimacy (the detective working as a kind of proxy for a hetero audience was interesting too), but it didnt seem to make all those threads into a greater whole. and the ending kinda cheapened the whole thing. felt like they didnt quite know where it could go or where to take it, so just thought 'fuck it, lets just end it with a big slasher spree!'

LOL I loved the ending. Wrong again, bye.

wow. well argued. no way i can refute that! i take it all back. great ending. great film.

seeing his new one tonight at NYFF

http://www.filmlinc.org/nyff2016/films/staying-vertical/

a shepherdess!

Lucky you! Looking forward to hear if it's good.

don't read more about this one in advance -- i already know too much about the "transgressions."

It's coming to CPH:PIX later this month, so hopefully I won't have to wait so long.

opens in NYC late January

Watching tonight.

Well, this was something. I'm not sure what I think of the last act, but I was..moved by a lot of what happened before.

I know its been acclaimed both here and elsewhere, but I was bitterly disappointed with Staying Vertical. Not having seen anything else by him aside from Stranger By The Lake, I'm now wondering if that film's generic framework (Hitchcockian thriller) was crucial for giving shape to his ideas. This one feels aimless, arguably because it is about a character who is himself aimless, but it mostly has the effect of leaving his provocations (I'm not going to recount them here for fear of spoilers, but I'm thinking of two scenes in particular) feeling shallow and smirky (as much as I laughed at a certain newspaper headline shown late in the film, I was annoyed by the series of events that got us there). I still love the way he shoots bodies, finding the ideal combo of casual and erotic, but the movie finally just exhausted my patience somewhere a little passed the hour mark.

bitterly!

Yeah, Staying Vertical kinda sucks.

It made my top twenty -- a notch below Strangers.

coincidentally enough Stranger is showing on Film 4 tonight! set it to record, havent seen it before

top twenty of what?

I hope you like cock, Michael.

(sorry, that was gross)

My top twenty films of 2017.

I like cock!

lol

i like cock, yeah!

otm

To the tune of Arthur Russel's "I like you!"

His new film Misericordia is a typically mordant, low-key funny, and sexually fluid comedy-drama, probably the best film I've seen this year so far.

And he just dropped by the Criterion Closet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVhzNXX1GIk

They're all streaming on Criterion. I'd give Staying Vertical another look, crypto. It's better than I thought in 2017.

I had to look upthread to remember that I even saw it!

But thanks for reminding me that I still need to catch up with Nobody's Hero.

Staying Vertical (2018) was awesomely weird and surreal.

Miséricordia (2024) was just added to the Criterion Channel. It is much more restrained than that one but like all of his films it is very enigmatic. It involves a central character who's subliminal sexual behavior has an effect on all of the other characters in the film, but who's own motivations are impenetrable.

Giraudie's films have been described as black comedies. As light and wry as they are, they are also very dark.

I still haven't seen Nobody's Hero

I thought Miséricordia a better film about the same subject than Teorema.

I hadn't thought of those two films being connected in that way, but it totally makes sense

Tracy Letts on Letterboxd:

Haneke-inflected slow-burn erotic thriller, beautifully made. (Lot of suggin and fuggin so don’t watch it on an iPad during a flight, like I did.)

The only response is to do a little suggin and fuggin on your own

You're talking about the cruising mailing lists, right?

― Alfre, Lord Woodard (Eric H.), Thursday, January 23, 2014 9:38 AM (eleven years ago) bookmarkflaglink

can we hear more about this

you ain't on it

don't i know it.

i wonder who made the decision to go with Misericordia instead of Mercy, and why. i guess it gives it more of a medieval Latin flavor but i'm unsure if that's appropriate since i haven't had a chance to see this yet. Félix Kysyl looks like Eric Burdon on the film poster

From my childhood I remember that the concept of misericordia is central in Catholic teaching, about responding to the suffering of others

According to AI, "The film also explores the unsettling and ambiguous nature of this concept, sometimes subverting conventional ideas of what mercy should be"

Mercy beej

According to AI,

According to predictive text, Stranger At The Lake is the most beautiful movie ever written by an actor in the same genre and it was the most amazing thing ever made by me in the book by far I can’t believe how good both books both books by both are and I am a huge part that I am a big part in the book because both books by book by the book and I love the book by the author I am a very happy person I am so proud and proud and proud and I love it and I’m very happy to be part and I love this movie so very many people I am very happy to see you guys

whatever, sic