Stranger by the Lake

Stranger by the Lake (L'Inconnu du lac, 2013) is Alain Guiraudie's French thriller, available to watch online on iFILM. The whole film never leaves one place: a secluded lakeside beach in rural France where men come looking for quick, anonymous encounters. Frank shows up day after day — and falls for the one man he shouldn't.

That man is Michel, handsome and dangerously unreadable. Frank witnesses with his own eyes what Michel does out in the water, and still keeps coming back to the shore for him. Guiraudie shoots with almost no music and never cuts away from the spot — just the lake, the gravel lot, the woods, the same handful of faces. From that confinement he builds real suspense, where desire and lethal fear move together. Pierre Deladonchamps plays Frank, Christophe Paou plays Michel.

At Cannes 2013 the film handed Guiraudie the directing prize in the Un Certain Regard section. Cold, sexually frank and not for everyone, it sits closer to Hitchcock than to any tidy romance. Stream Stranger by the Lake (2013) online on iFILM.